ISIS is Islamic, but we should still shut up about them

Islam has never been united. For one thing, there is no Muslim pontiff who speaks for the world's 1.6 billion Muslims living on six continents. Yet even the Roman Catholic Pope speaks for only about half of the world's 2.2 billion Christians; and millions of those Catholics choose to disregard him on such crucial matters of the faith as birth control, premarital sex, divorce and gay relationships. 

If we sat down and took a deep breath, we'd all admit that there is no perfect, ideal version of Catholicism, or Christianity for that matter, that exists separately from the people who call themselves Christians. Anybody who says he is Christian and practices some form of the faith, no matter how strange, is a Christian. Attempts to label practitioners on the margins of a faith as "heretics" or "not true believers" has been tried, will continue to be tried, in vain. It only comes with conflict, violent schisms, cults and new denominations.

The same is true of Islam, with its Sufi, Sunni, Shia branches... and a bunch of sects and sub-sects that I don't know or understand. It is diverse and always changing.

ISIS in particular, with upwards of 30,000 fighters, or about 0.00002 % of the world's Muslims, is Islamic, just as they claim. A dark and evil part, but a part of Islam nonetheless. Just as violent white supremacists in the KKK or Branch Davidians are indeed part of the Christian pageant, because they profess themselves to be so. You or I can stand aloof and say they're not, but Christianity is what Christians do; Islam is what Muslims do; including all the good and bad. These religions are not what some sacred texts say. We can't just define away the behaviors -- and the believers -- that we don't accept as pure or "mainstream." (Although millions of believers will continue to do just that, to the detriment of world peace and understanding....)

Likewise, the U.S. should not -- and I'm thinking of Barack Obama specifically but before him scores of prominent conservatives -- engage in pointless, unwinnable schismatic debates about who is or isn't Islamic. It's apparent why both sides are tempted to do so: conservatives want to stoke xenophobic fear among Americans that justifies, post facto, their wars of choice in the Mideast and continued spying and infringements on our civil and constitutional liberties; and President Obama, in response, wants to calm Americans' nerves, and avoid antagonizing one-fifth of the globe, including America's peaceful 2 million+ Muslims. Conservatives' anti-Islamic argument is mean and stupid on its face; Obama is stupid for engaging seriously with stupidity.

Just as our arguing that ISIS is not Islamic does not seem to affect their appeal to disaffected recruits from all over the world, nor does our paying so much attention to ISIS hurt their cause. Just the opposite. When the most powerful nation in the history of the world -- not to mention the "Great Satan" -- declares that ISIS is scary and powerful, it's the best possible endorsement for the Islamic State's recruitment and fundraising efforts.   

Keeping a cool head and maintaining perspective on global threats are responsibilities of being a superpower. We must be serious when choosing our enemies, and more serious in how we fight them. That doesn't automatically mean all guns -- and mouths -- ablazing.

I've said it before: With all of its vast power, the U.S. shouldn't say that ISIS is an "existential threat," "clear and present danger," or anything of the kind.  It's the equivalent of a well-armed huntsman hyperventilating at a swarm of mosquitoes. 

Since 9/11, almost no leaders of any political stripe are willing to say the truth: We cannot defend ourselves against every attack on U.S. soil by extremists, especially by lone wolf terrorists inspired by the Internet and driven by deep personal resentments and/or violent mental illness. (ISIS's forte.)  And especially against those attacks on U.S. soil that require very little coordination or preparation (that could tip off domestic spies), and make use of readily available weapons of mass terror: assault-type weapons, ammunition, and bomb-making ingredients.  

In October 2002, I grasped this sad fact immediately and personally during the DC sniper attacks. The terrorists, who everyone was sure must be al Qaeda, ended up being a disgruntled, mentally disturbed Army vet (the sniper) and his impressionable teenage nephew (the spotter and getaway driver).  They were armed only with a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle. They killed 17 people and wounded 10 others, and perhaps worse, caused widespread terror in several states before they were caught, by selecting victims at gas stations and shoppers in parking lots, two of the commonest places in American life. That's how easy terrorism is. And there's nothing stopping anybody today from doing exactly the same thing. Nothing. Nowadays we just have a few more cameras around that anyway wouldn't pick up snipers tucked away in the distance.... 

Our leaders continue to lie to us that by eliminating (as in 100%!) the threat of Islamist extremism "over there," and oppressing the peaceful Muslims at home, we can keep ourselves safe "over here."  In fact, by persecuting Muslims at home, and making stupid wars of choice over there, we make Americans less safe over here, in ways that we've witnessed numerous times. (In a word: blowback).  And worse, we who usually refuse to trust our leaders, who know they tell us what we what we want to hear, choose to believe their lies. (The 240,000-employee strong Dept. of Homeland Security, which didn't exist prior to 9/11, the NSA, the Pentagon's top brass, and the military-intelligence contractors getting $285 billion a year certainly thank us for our choice!)  We should know better.

When influential bloviators like Glenn Beck, and even conservatives that I know, say that radical Islam is one of America's most dire problems, nobody dares laugh at them. Yet if I said the KKK was something every U.S. Presidential candidate should propose a plan to fight, I'd be laughed out of town. Never mind that there are upwards of 3,000 Klan members in the U.S., in all 50 states, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, as opposed to 100 or fewer members of ISIS in the United States, according to the Pentagon.

Either way it's like arguing which is worse, the mosquito or the fly. The West, in particular the United States, has many more important problems to address. 

Publicly, we should ignore ISIS; outside the public eye of cameras and journalists, we should fight ISIS seriously but in proportion to the threat they pose, in the time and manner of our own choosing, and not have our actions be driven by the release of disgusting YouTube videos.

Retired general: 'Why we lost' in Iraq, Afghanistan

This is nothing new if you've been reading me for the past, oh, eight years, but since often the messenger matters more than the message, here you go, from a retired Army Lt. General.

A 3-Star General Explains 'Why We Lost' In Iraq, Afghanistan

November 9, 2014 | NPR

URL: http://n.pr/1yYEegl

Being an 'indispensable nation' is killing America

This op-ed is worth re-posting in full.

Never let it be said I'm a partisan hack: I support Borosage's indictment of President Obama's executive overreach in conducting military operations without Congressional approval for war. 

More damning to my mind has been President Obama's failure to articulate to the nation (and Congress) a national security-military doctrine/vision (call it what you will) that makes it clear when he thinks the United States should send its troops into battle, and when we shouldn't. Granted, this may be the most difficult job of any POTUS in an ever-changing world, and with inherited conflicts of past presidents.

Is it because Obama and his team doesn't have the strategic capacity to develop such a vision? Is it because Obaama is too arrogant to articulate it for us, we're just supposed to trust him not to do "stupid shit"? Or, most likely, is it because a timid Obama fears that no matter what he says, it will be parsed and pilloried by Republicans -- who also can't agree among themselves on a foreign policy -- looking to score partisan political points?

Borosage is right to point out that the opportunity cost of U.S. military adventures abroad is investment in piss-poor education and crumbling infrastructure at home. Maybe our government can buy guns and butter... but not forever, not at a sustainable cost. This is where the "fiscally responsible" yet "pro-military" Tea Parties and Republicans have fallen on their faces as an opposition, by refusing to specify just what they are willing to give up to achieve their stated top priority of fiscal balance.

Being the ‘indispensable nation’ is killing American democracy

By Robert L. Borosage

October 20, 2014 | Reuters

America — proudly dubbed the “indispensable nation” by its national-security managers — is now the entangled nation enmeshed in conflicts across the globe.

President Barack Obama, scorned by his Republican critics as an “isolationist” who wants to “withdraw from the world,” is waging the longest war in U.S. history in Afghanistan, boasts of toppling the Muammar Gaddafi regime in Libya, launches airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against Islamic State and picks targets for drones to attack in as many as eight countries, while dispatching planes to the Russian border in reaction to its machinations in Ukraine, and a fleet to the South China Sea as the conflict over control of islands and waters escalates between China and its neighbors.

The indispensable nation is permanently engaged across the globe. But endless war undermines the Constitution. Democracy requires openness; war justifies secrecy. Democracy forces attention be paid to the common welfare; war demands attention and resources be spent on distant conflicts. Democracy involves forging coalitions to get action in the Congress; war is waged on executive order. The Constitution restrains the executive in times of peace; constitutional strictures are trampled in times of war.

When the founders wrote the Constitution, they worried about the tendency of kings, or presidents, to make war for personal aggrandizement or national glory.  So they gave Congress the power to declare war, intent on “clogging, not facilitating” the rush to war.  For the Republic, peace would be the normal state of affairs. War was a disruption — entered into only with prior debate and consideration by  Congress, the elected body whose members best reflected the attitudes of their constituents.

The United States, in the words of conservative John Quincy Adams, would provide a shining example of liberty as long as “she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

But now the pursuit of monsters to destroy is unrelenting. Almost inevitably, it seems, the restraints of the Constitution are being trampled. With little debate, U.S. leaders have chosen permanent global intervention even at the cost of undermining the Republic.

For the cost of war can be measured in dollars not spent here at home.

An educated citizenry is the foundation of a robust democracy. Yet from the absence of free, full-day pre-K to affordable colleges to advanced training, the United States is skimping on investment in educating its citizens. A modern infrastructure is also essential to a competitive, high-wage economy. But while Washington spends $3 trillion on Iraq, there hasn’t been a serious discussion about bringing America’s aged infrastructure, including our roads, bridges and airports, up to standard — which would cost about the same. 

A bridge to somewhere... now a bridge to nowhere.

Instead of this funding, the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies spend more on their militaries than the rest of the world combined. Washington maintains more than 1,000 bases, called “military sites,” across the globe, plus 11 aircraft-carrier task forces that are essentially moveable bases. U.S. conventional and nuclear forces are unrivaled — yet Washington plans to spend another trillion dollars over the next 30 years modernizing nuclear weapons that the United States aims never to use. U.S. intelligence and covert forces are permanently engaged, often secretly creating the implicit commitments that will force the next intervention.

It is only America, as the president said in a speech announcing his intention to “degrade and ultimately defeat” Islamic State, which he refers to as ISIL, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, that “has the capacity and the will to mobilize the world against terrorism … against Russian aggression … to contain … Ebola and more.”

This president, more than his predecessors, understands the perils of being the “indispensable nation.” Elected in large part to get the United States out of the seemingly endless wars in the Middle East, he now finds himself forced into another open-ended commitment.

In his speech to the National Defense University in 2013, Obama argued, “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’ ” Obama warned specifically about this. “The choice we make about war,” the president said, “can impact —  in sometimes unintended ways — the openness and freedom on which our way of life depends.”

Yet even with this awareness, and no reelection race facing him, Obama could not escape the imperatives of America’s role as the indispensable nation. The commitments are too many,  the engagement too permanent, the capacity unrivalled — seemingly making all things possible.  As a result, this former professor of constitutional law has governed over the greatest assertion of executive authority — claiming the power to make war, to surveil, arrest, detain and even kill Americans without prior judicial review or due process.

Ike warned us about the growing "military-industrial complex" that sought to feed itself at the federal trough.

His Justice Department has used espionage laws against reporters and whistleblowers.  The secrecy shields massive waste, fraud and abuse, as the military-industrial complex that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against consumes the bulk of the national budget, aside from payments on the national debt and the insurance programs of Social Security and Medicare.

When President George W. Bush was about to launch the war in Iraq, millions of Americans – as well as many people around the globe — marched in protest. The large demonstrations against war led the New York Times to dub world public opinion a second superpower. Bush sought authority from Congress and a dramatic congressional debate took place, with strong dissent against the war.

When Obama committed the United States to the fight against Islamic State, he claimed the authority to act without Congress, though adding he would “welcome” congressional support. Yet with the midterm elections then a few months away, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress chose to postpone the debate and the vote.

The bombing began on presidential order. Americans accepted their role as spectators, registering no significant objection to this presidential war-making.  The indispensable nation is not only spending lives and resources on endless wars abroad, it is shredding its Constitution at home.

Ironically, America’s democracy is still strong enough to render it less than competent as a global policeman. Our military is the finest in the world, but still finds it hard to win a war. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate that while presidents can commit the nation virtually anywhere, Americans sour on long, costly interventions on the other side of the world.

This leads to strategies like “no boots on the ground” — designed not to rouse public opposition but almost certain to fail. Polls show that Americans have no interest in policing the globe. If the Constitution no longer constrains the president from making war, the public still limits his ability to wage it.

Blackwater gets U.S. justice for 2007 Iraq killings

Sedulous readers will recall my opposition to private military contractors, (aka mercenaries), or at least our increasing reliance on them to do jobs the U.S. Military used to do for itself, such as security, logistics and even intelligence.

Why? Because in Iraq and Afghanistan, they haven't been subject to local law, military discipline or the chain of command. They are almost a law unto themselves. 

I also argue they're bad for morale, what with their fat paychecks while our troops' families back home depend on food stamps to survive. And strategically, it's dangerous for our military to lose capabilities it once had and become dependent on outside contractors. 

We do know why the explosive growth in mercenaries though, since 2001: 

  1) They don't count as "troops" that we should care about when generals or politicians talk about U.S. forces overseas; 

  2) None of us has to mourn them when they die or hang a yellow ribbon to keep them safe; 

  3) They are a great way for Republicans to hand out government cheese and re-collect it in the form of campaign contributions (Blackwater alone has collected more than $1 billion in U.S. Government contracts, many of them non-compete); and

  4) There isn't a single government service that Republicans don't want to privatize or outsource, as the eight year of Dubya-Cheney's regime proved.

U.S. mercenaries caused tragedy in September 2007, when a group of Americans from Blackwater, LLC opened fire at a crowded Baghdad intersection and killed 17 innocent Iraqi civilians and seriously wounded 20 others. I posted about it then, writing:

When Blackwater's highly-paid mercenaries indiscriminately shoot and kill innocent Iraqis, the Iraqi people don't know it was mercenaries who did it, they think it was U.S. soldiers. Mercenaries in Iraq are harming the mission of our real troops by turning the Iraqis against America.

Blackwater is a deadly menace, and yet another blight on America's image as our real soldiers try to win hearts and minds in Iraq. 

Or as I've said before in more sanguine terms, it's hard to "win hearts and minds" when you're shooting them in the head and chest. This has always been the fundamental contradiction of America's occupations, er, counter-insurgency efforts  in Afghanistan and Iraq. We call these places "wars" but we also "liberated" their people who we're trying to help while fighting them. 

Even now I hear hot-air pundits like Limbaugh and Hannity say we "lost" Iraq after gaining territory here or there, as if it was a conventional fight to take and hold ground from the Nazis. 

Anyhow... finally justice has been done for some of the Blackwater killers, in the U.S.: Three were found guilty of manslaughter and one of first-degree murder.

And as for Blackwater, well... like many PMCs, they change their name as often as most people change jobs. It went from Blackwater Worldwide to Xe Services, LLC to Academi, LLC and most recently, through a merger with a rival, to Constellis Holdings. Check out Blackwater's detailed but murky history here, including other U.S. federal charges against Blackwater, and its cozy connections with Republicans and even the Family Research Council! 

I'll leave you with this this beaut [emphasis mine]:

[T]he State Department's chief investigator [of Blackwater] reported being threatened by a Blackwater official in Iraq in August 2007. The investigator said project manager Daniel Carroll told him "that he could kill me at that very moment and no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq."

With such an attitude, it's not surprising that a few weeks later Blackwater killed and wounded all those Iraqis. Good thing somebody could and did do something about it!

US jury convicts Blackwater guards in 2007 killing of Iraqi civilians

By Dan Roberts 

October 22, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/42kcf

Younge: Americans want U.S. power without cost or risk

Gary Younge is right, American's are schizo, post-Dubya, when it comes to the POTUS and foreign policy:

Obama’s apparent inability to make anything happen on the international stage is unnerving many. Big things keep taking place to which he appears to offer only incremental responses within a strategic void. [...]

Obama’s foreign policy approval ratings, once one of his strengths, are now pitifully low. According to a Pew research survey, more than half of Americans believe that he is insufficiently “tough”. This is partly presentational: Obama has always found showy rhetoric in the face of serious problems hokey. His deliberative style owes more to the constitutional law professor he once was than the leader of the armed forces he now is.

His reputation for “weakness” is also ironic given the number of people Obama has assassinated with drones. [...]

The public actually supports most of what Obama has done. Polls show that a majority of Americans back air strikes against Isis and troop withdrawals from Iraq; the use of drones to kill “suspected terrorists” abroad; and overwhelmingly prefer sanctions over military action against Russia. A plurality believe that Obama is removing troops from Afghanistan at the right pace. But a president is more than the sum of his policies.

As I've said before, I don't think there is an Obama Doctrine, besides, I suppose, "Don't do stupid shit"... whatever, that is, Obama and his inner circle consider to be stupid.

But does every President need a doctrine?  That's a separate question. But one must question how much freedom any POTUS has to make his own strategic choices without succumbing to policy inertia of past presidents. Just look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Russia... The choices and facts on the ground were already made over years if not decades before. But I digress....

Almost certainly what Obama is planning now against Islamic State is not doctrinal; it's reactive to media and public pressure after ISIS killers publicly cut off the heads of American hostages and persecuted Arab Christians. He wouldn't be the first president pushed by the public into military action, but it's certainly no way to run a foreign policy.

Obama's dilemma is America's appetite for power but aversion to political risk

By Gary Younge

September 7, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/4xc5j

Khrushcheva: Remember when USSR shot down S. Korean airliner

I would like to be so optimistic that Putin is digging his own grave with his neo-imperial, 19th century foreign policy against his near neighbors such as Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.

But my gut tells me he won't quit out of embarrassment at "worldwide condemnation" or even because of crippling sectoral sanctions on Russia's economy. He'll keep going till somebody stops him, by force.

That's certainly what Poland, the Baltics, Romania and others like Kazakhstan are worrying about right now: which one of them is next?

Putin's Tipping Point? Remembering What Happened When the Soviets Shot Down a Plane

By Nina L. Khrushcheva

July 23, 2014 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1z35tqh

Zakaria: 'Obama doctrine' is right for today

I doubt that Obama's foreign policy moves add up to a coherent doctrine; nevertheless, it's true that Obama does what most Americans want on any given foreign policy issue, which is, basically, not much.

The "problem" with Obama's popular approach to foreign policy, from the perspective of U.S. pundits and wonks, is that "doing what the public wants" is almost always the opposite of "leadership." Furthermore, the U.S. must "lead" on every major issue and geo-political crisis, say U.S. pundits; failing to be seen as "in-charge" automatically diminishes U.S. influence. 

They believe U.S. presidents are supposed to drag the public and Congress by the ears into foreign adventures if that's what's necessary; to them that's what being commander-in-chief is all about.

The fundamental danger of American overreach never crosses their minds. (We're seeing a tiny taste of it now in the VA scandal, with a system pushed beyond capacity, and a GOP Congress that has refused to spend more money on our troops in the name of fighting the deficit).

Considering that the media, academia and think tanks almost universally cheered on the Great War on Terror and the disastrous invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, they have little or no credibility left when it comes to telling the public they are wrong.

Of course I disagree with some of Obama's foreign policy moves, especially on Ukraine -- he should be sending military supplies at least -- but nothing Obama says or does makes me worry for our future the way Dubya did. 

"Prudence" is the operative word that skipped a few presidencies: from father over the head of Bubba and Dubya to Obama who cleaned up their imprudent messes....

Obama’s leadership is right for today

By Fareed Zakaria

May 29, 2014 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/1wuK0X8

U.S. intel. director: Earth is (still) a scary place

We're all gonna dieeeeeeeeeeeeee!  Aaaaaaaah!

Aw Lawdy, please save us CIA and NSA, save us!  

Let me quote Michael Cohen at length [emphasis mine] in his critique of the annual world threat assessment that the National Intelligence Director is obliged to give the Senate:

There is the habitually frightening adjective war front, "an assertive Russia, a competitive China; a dangerous, unpredictable North Korea, a challenging Iran." The sober-minded might look at these countries and conclude that a more accurate set of descriptors would be "an enfeebled and corrupt Russia, an economically slowing and environmentally challenged China, a contained and sort of predictable North Korea and an isolated and diplomatically-engaged Iran". But that would be a pretty lame threat assessment, wouldn't it?

Then there are the really scary sounding threats that aren't actually threats to Americans. Things like, "lingering ethnic divisions in the Balkans, perpetual conflict and extremism in Africa; violent political struggles in … the Ukraine, Burma, Thailand and Bangladesh." [...]  [B]ut the idea that any of these are serious "crises" or "threats" to America and its citizens is ludicrous.

This is what makes Clapper's argument – and indeed the entire process of writing a "worldwide threat assessment" so fundamentally unserious and distorting. America doesn't face a single truly serious security threat. We are a remarkably safe and secure nation, protected by two oceans, an enormous and highly effective military and dozens upon dozens of like-minded allies and friends around the world. Truly we have nothing to fear – except perhaps global climate change, which oddly merits a one-paragraph mention (pdf) in this year's threat assessment.

To listen to Clapper and others in the intelligence community one might never know that inter-state war has largely disappeared and that wars in general are in the midst of a multi-decade decline. 

And let's not forget that Clapper is the same guy who lied to Congress about not spying on U.S. citizens!:

The irony of all this is that Clapper has been under fire for months now because he allegedly lied to Congress over the extent to which the National Security Agency was collecting phone and e-mail records of individual Americans.

Yet, the yarn he spun on Capitol Hill last week was far worse than that: deceiving Americans about the nature of the world today and the threats facing the country. But in a political environment in which threat mongering and exaggeration is the norm rather than the exception, Clapper not only gets a pass – hardly anyone even noticed.

I've had enough of these obvious lies from "serious" spies protecting their administrative turf and bloated billion-dollar budgets.  There is no way that the U.S. is in more danger now than during the Cold War.  We have no enemies who can attack us, save Russia with its ICBMs. Terrorism is a mosquito on the list of actual threats to American citizens.

The James Clappers of the U.S. military-intelligence community might bamboozle and intimidate our Congressmen and journalists with their doomsday speeches, but not me.  What about you?

James Clapper might as well be called director of US fearmongering

By Michael Cohen

February 6, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3mgk3

Conservatives ruining 'American exceptionalism'

Beinartfeb argues convincingly that conservatives, who say they defend "American exceptionalism," are actually doing the most to destroy Americans' feeling of having a special place in the world that diverges historically and culturally from Europe.  

How?  First, because of conservatives' politicizing religion. Feelings of exceptionalism are strongest with those who attend church regularly and identify with a particular religious denomination. By politicizing religion, starting in the 1980s, conservatives have steadily turned off generations of Americans from churchy Christianity. They believe church has gotten too political.  (They're right).  We have an increasing contingent of "spiritual not religious" Americans who never hear the pastor's or televangelist's politicized sermons.

Secondly, because of Dubya. A belief in American exceptionalism goes along with an aggressive, "unapologetic" U.S. foreign policy. Thanks to Bush's avoidable debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq, two generations have been turned off from an active, interfering U.S. role in the world; and they are less likely to believe in "going it alone" and more likely to trust the UN and international institutions.

Third, because of economic inequality. Republican policies have limited class mobility, have encouraged accumulation of wealth at the top, and have made more Americans class-conscious: they are more likely to look at their country just like any other, where the Haves rule the Have-Nots -- not the land of the "American Dream" where anybody who works hard can live comfortably and even strike it rich. 

The End of American Exceptionalism

By Peter Beinartfeb

February 3, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-end-of-american-exceptionalism/283540/

Ex-CIA analyst and Army prof.: Don't trust Robert Gates

If you're at all concerned about Robert Gates's "revelations" in his recent memoirs about the Obama Administration then you should definitely read this article.

If you're like me and you see a guy in Gates who admits in his own memoirs that he was a burnout and reluctant SecDef before he even took the job in the Obama Administration, and now doesn't want to be associated with "defeat" in Iraq and Afghanistan (just like Dubya didn't want to -- hence he kept the troops there indefinitely, passing these two shit sandwiches to Obama...), and yet who writes in the same memoirs that he agrees with all Obama's major policy decisions (DWTF?!), then you can skip this one.

But like I said, if you have any doubts, just read this.

Robert Gates’ Narcissistic Notions of “Duty”

By Melvin A. Goodman

January 9, 2014 | CounterPunch

Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University.  He is the author of the recently published National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism (City Lights Publishers) and the forthcoming “The Path to Dissent: The Story of a CIA Whistleblower” (City Lights Publisher). Goodman is a former CIA analyst and a professor of international relations at the National War College.

URL: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/09/robert-gates-narcissistic-notions-of-duty/

Big Lib Idea of the Day: Free public higher education

About $40 billion. That's how much it would cost per year to pay for all students' education at public universities.  

This will never happen, sadly, because of the Tea Party mentality that is present in many Democrats' minds, too, that for some reason we have to approach every policy problem with a complicated cocktail of tax credits, loans, exceptions, opt-outs and incentives instead of government simply paying for it, at a lower cost, with less anxiety and uncertainty for qualifying students and their parents.

Meanwhile, our conservative brethren don't make a peep or give a second thought about the $1.5 trillion cost so far (or at least $4 trillion in the long-term) for Dubya's unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  $4 trillion is enough to pay for college for everybody for about 100 years, and somehow we found that money.  

Priorities, folks.  Priorities!  Jobs, health, education, housing.  (These all happen to be winning issues for Democrats, but hey, that's just incidental.)

Here's Exactly How Much the Government Would Have to Spend to Make Public College Tuition-Free

By Jordan Weissmann

January 3, 2014 | The Atlantic

A mere $62.6 billion dollars!

According to new Department of Education data, that's how much tuition public colleges collected from undergraduates in 2012 across the entire United States. And I'm not being facetious with the word mere, either. The New America Foundation says that the federal government spent a whole $69 billion in 2013 on its hodgepodge of financial aid programs, such as Pell Grants for low-income students, tax breaks, work study funding. And that doesn't even include loans. 

 

If we were we scrapping our current system and starting from scratch, Washington could make public college tuition free with the money it sets aside its scattershot attempts to make college affordable today.

Of course, we're not going to start from scratch (and I'm not even sure we should want to make state schools totally free). But I like to make this point every so often because I think it underscores what a confused mess higher education finance is in this country. On the whole, Americans seem to want affordable colleges that are accessible to all. But rather than simply using our resources to maintain a cheap public system (and remember, public schools educate 75 percent of undergrads), we spill them into a fairly wasteful and expensive private sector. At one point, a Senate investigation found that the for-profit sector alone was chowing down on 25 percent of all federal aid dollars. 

If that story sounds awfully similar the problems the U.S. faces with healthcare costs, well, that's because it is similar. Americans have an allergy to straightforward policy solutions involving the public sector. And for that, we pay a price.

Update—Friday Jan. 3, 3:45 PM: Just to clarify, because some readers have asked, making tuition free in 2012 would have required $62.6 billion on top of what state and local governments already spend subsidizing public colleges, as well as some of the federal spending that doesn't go towards financial aid. Again, you can find a detailed breakdown of how our colleges are funded in the Department of Education's data. 

For anybody interested in reading more about the idea of making public college tuition free, and the vast array of economic considerations that would entail, here's a lengthy piece I wrote last year.

Update—Friday Jan. 3, 4:31 PM: One more update to answer another good question I've received. Technically, you could say the additional cost of making college tuition free would be even cheaper than $62.6 billion. How come? Because most Pell Grant money is already spent at public colleges. In 2011 - 2012, state school students received $21.8 billion in grants. So, if you subtract that from the total needed to completely eliminate tuition, it the sum would be closer to $40 billion. (Apologies for not teasing that point out earlier. I'd noted it in a previous article and didn't think to repeat it.)

War Nerd: Saudis use jihad as a release valve

Saudi jihadist motto: What happens outside Saudi Arabia stays outside Saudi Arabia.

I hope soon more Americans will realize that America's two greatest "allies" in the Mideast, Israel and Saudi Arabia, are doing the most of any country to get Americans killed by terrorists.

And I'm glad to see the War Nerd is back at it, edumacating us about blood, guts, war and politics.

The War Nerd: Saudis, Syria, and “Blowback”

By Gary Brecher 

December 19, 2013 | Pando Daily

URL: http://pando.com/2013/12/19/the-war-nerd-saudis-syria-and-blowback/

Putting vets on a pedestal doesn't help them

On Veteran's Day, let's resolve to help our returning troops do what the WWII generation did after war: get back on with civilian life.  

Applause, "hero worship" and movie theater discounts aren't what they need from us right now. They need education, training and job opportunities. They need patient assistance with reintegrating into society.

Help Veterans by Taking Them Off the Pedestal

By Alex Horton

November 10, 2013 | Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/11/help-veterans-by-taking-them-off-the-pedestal/281316/

U.S. foreign policy must be moral as well as prudent

This entire op-ed by Harvard professor Joseph Nye is worth reading. I especially liked his comparison of Bush 41 vs. Bush 43 [emphasis mine]:

When we cannot be sure how to improve the world, prudence becomes an important virtue, and grandiose visions can pose a grave danger. This is sometimes forgotten by those who want Obama to place bigger bets in the revolutions of today’s Middle East. It is one thing to try to nudge events at the margins and assert our values in the long term; it is another to think we can shape revolutions we do not fully understand. There is a difference between a limited punishment of Syria for breaking an international taboo on the use of chemical weapons and becoming involved in a civil war. In foreign policy, as in medicine, it is important to first do no harm. Bush 41, who lacked the ability to articulate a vision but was able to steer through crises, turned out to be a better leader than his son, who had a powerful vision but little contextual intelligence about the region he tried to reshape.

Definitely I agree with Nye that prudence is the word of the day -- of the decade -- in U.S. foreign policy.  We'll be paying for Dubya's imprudence in Afghanistan and Iraq for decades to come. What I disagree with is Nye's America-first view on foreign policy that naturally gives U.S. presidents the right or the option to intervene militarily wherever they wish, as long as their "big bets" show promising odds of success over there -- success as defined by us, over here. 

What Nye and others don't realize is that we are in a new era, a new wave of democratization, now continuing in the Arab-Muslim world. The arc of history bends toward democracy. The U.S. has played no small role in that. (Pat self on back). So anybody straining against that arc will feel the pain, eventually. That goes for the U.S. at home or interfering abroad.

Egypt offers preliminary evidence that Arab-Muslims refuse to go back to dictatorship.  They've had a taste of revolution and they liked it.  Certainly I disagree with the way the Egyptian military with the support of some Egyptians ousted the democratically elected President Morsi, even while I sympathize with their grievances against him.  The street protests of an active urban minority proved very effective, but it was hardly democratic or representative of the wishes of 84 million Egyptians.  Nevertheless, what did we immediately see thereafter? The Egyptian military promised fresh elections.  We'll see if the generals follow through on their promise -- and the U.S. should pressure them hard to do so -- or if the interim government will ban the Muslim Brotherhood as a political party. Nevertheless, the point is that a "new normal" has been established: elections, democracy.  Baby steps.  

Hence, Nye rightly reminds America to think of revolutions in terms of decades, not weeks or years, and to "first do no harm."  But Nye is old-fashioned in his chauvinistic belief that the U.S. can intervene boldly in other nation's affairs and still be lucky enough to avoid blowback.  No.  The world has changed. Everything happening everywhere is known to everybody; and small voices can have huge ripple effects in unexpected places.  Like our back yard.

More importantly, we must graciously accept that the international institutions of peace, national sovereignty and democracy that America helped to build in the 20th century increasingly constrain U.S. foreign policy options as they gather power and widespread recognition. That is a good thing for everybody, the U.S. included. We shouldn't struggle against those reassuring bonds; we shouldn't strain to unbend that just arc.

What I'm getting at, finally, is a plea for a moral foreign policy based on U.S values.  Yes, really and truly.  Not just words to that effect, but deeds. That is the way.  

Many will say I'm naive.  But I say: isn't it in fact naive to think anymore, post-911, that we can make agreements with dictators and hope to maintain control, through them, over millions of angry and oppressed people?  People with access to the Internet, and weapons, and relatives, friends and sympathizers all over the world?  OK, maybe for a while.  But then what?  All that anger will burst forth eventually... and do we really want to bear the brunt of it?  

No.  We must be respected by the people of the world, and not just their leaders.  And we can do that only by leading with our values that we believe are universal (and in fact God-given) and that lead to the greater happiness of all mankind.  If we really believe that, and we're right, then America should prevail.  If we only pay lip service to our values outside U.S. borders, or think they are only for white Christians surrounded by two oceans, then... By all means, let's rely on old-fashioned realpolitik and brute force to get what we want.  But then we shouldn't be shocked or outraged when others resent us or even try to kill us in response; and no more asking ourselves, then, in a pitiful mockery of self-reflection, Why do they hate us?

The foreign policy risk behind the Arab revolutions

By Joseph S. Nye Jr.

August 31, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/17sysWe