Digital Adolescence

30 June 10
“Stan, poke your grandma!” – Randy Marsh

There’s an old Chris Rock joke where he’s musing about why relationships are so hard to maintain.  What he hits on is that relationships deteriorate because sooner or later you have to show the other person who you really are, and it’s all downhill from there:

That’s right, man. Relationships: easy to get into, hard to maintain. Why are they so hard to maintain? Because it’s hard to keep up the lie. ‘Cause you can’t get nobody being you. You got to lie to get somebody. You can’t get nobody looking like you look, acting like you act…sounding like you sound. When you meet somebody for the first time, you’re not meeting them. You’re meeting their representative.

(It’s funnier when he says it, but I couldn’t find good video of it on-line.)

What Rock’s saying is that we all choose which parts of ourselves we present to others, because the truth is a little too ugly for polite society.  The trouble is finding someone who still cares even after the mask has slipped to the floor.

It is in that context that this James Fallows post ought to be considered.  Mostly it’s a thoughtful e-mail Fallows got about privacy in the age of Facebook and Google, when anything you type into a keyboard or save to your computer can come back to haunt you.  (The discussion began with the goofy Dave Weigel/Washington Post thing.)  What struck me was this:

My existence on the internet might be with my real name, but my suspicion is that the vast majority of people are creating Avatars of themselves on the internet, untagging Facebook photos and writing blog posts to fit the image they wish to project.

Bingo.  Today, in 2010, we’re smack dab in the middle of a transition from a culture that didn’t have an on-line component into one that does.  Really large numbers of people have been going on-line to interact with other people for only about fifteen years, and even over that relatively short amount of time nearly everything about how people do so has changed.

Five years ago Facebook was for college kids, now it’s ubiquitous.  Or is it?  Tens of millions of Americans don’t have Facebook accounts, and many never will.  Not because they’re too old or too disconnected, but simply because they don’t want one.  No part of on-line interaction is (yet) mandatory; you get to choose not only what to present, but how to present it.

The result is a great big natural experiment in which the previous rules of discretion, decent behavior, and so on have been upended.  But even on-line, Chris Rock’s observation about our “representatives” holds true.  Quite naturally, we tend to minimize our shortcomings (perceived and real) and maximize our strengths (again, perceived and real) when presenting ourselves to others, and the internet allows enormous variety in how one chooses to do that (Tethered Swimming included, shudder).

When and where things will be allowed to slide, and when and where things must be taken seriously, has not yet been worked out.  Fallows’ anonymous correspondent concludes with, “We still need a paperless way to be formal” and that is absolutely true.  On-line, the boundaries between work and personal, formal and informal are easily subverted, and the notions of which set of guidelines applies in which circumstances are still very much up in the air.

We haven’t worked out what the adult rules for on-line discourse are because we just haven’t had enough time.  In the interim, the experiment will continue.  Privacy?  We’ll find some way to maintain enough to let us all feel human, if maybe in a different way than before.  Decorum?  Sure, but maybe not in as many places as before.  Hiding the warts and crafting a representation that we think people will like a little better than the real thing?  That’s as old as the hills and nothing we’ve invented has shown any signs of stopping it.  It’s a great big digital adolescence, and none of us are older than fifteen.

Leave a Comment » | Systems Analyst, The Information Superhighway | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

Getting Closer

27 June 10
“Get a rope, Bart!” – Marge Simpson
“Nah, that’s okay.  I’m pretty sure I can struggle my way out.  First, I’ll just reach in and pull my legs out, now I’ll pull my arms out with my face.” – Homer Simpson

I don’t mean to keep harping on my cynical and impolite belief that the primary purpose of the Afghan War is to keep the Reds out of power here in America.  But in the wake of the McChrystal brouhaha, Steve Kornacki got closer to it than anyone else I’ve seen in print.  He fell a little bit short, but he was on the right path.  Please forgive a very gentle fisking, starting in the sixth of thirteen paragraphs:

On one level, it’s not that hard to see how he got snared in this trap. He came to office promising to focus on the war in Afghanistan and, in accordance with that pledge, picked his own general to run the show and supplied him with (some) of the new troops he was looking for. Afghanistan became Obama’s war, and presidents don’t like to lose wars. But to really understand where Obama went wrong, you have to go back to his decision as a candidate to make a strong distinction between the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq.

So far so good.  Here’s paragraph seven:

When he hit the campaign trail in 2006 and 2007, this made for brilliant political strategy. The Iraq war had become broadly unpopular and the Democratic base was still seething over the assist so many of its leaders had given President Bush in launching it. In the primaries, it was a no-brainer for Obama to contrast his early opposition to Iraq with Hillary Clinton’s vote to authorize it.

Still mostly okay, but there’s a troubling implication to this that we’ll get to in just a moment.  Here’s paragraph eight:

But Obama also feared that the “peacenik” label could hurt him in the fall. So Afghanistan, then not nearly as unpopular a venture as it now is, became a useful tool. He could embrace Afghanistan, prove he wasn’t scared of war, and frame his difference with hawks as one of judgment — not toughness. So it was that Obama was able to spend the fall of 2008 taunting his Republican opponent, a war hero who touted foreign policy wisdom as one of his chief assets, for foolishly believing that the “central front” in the war on terror was Iraq, when it was obviously in Afghanistan (and Pakistan).

And now we get to the nut of the problem.  While lauding Obama’s political dexterity, Kornacki is also subtly blaming him for the polluted water in which he swims.  Look at the language, Obama “feared” the “”peacenik” label” (note the scare quotes), he viewed a war as a “useful tool”.  The obvious implication here is that Obama erred in making this decision, and that he (and everyone else) is now paying the price.

Kornacki goes on to talk about Democrats being haunted by the mistake of voting against the Persian Gulf War back in 1990; he notes that Bill Clinton was able to duck the issue (as he was a governor not a senator), and that Al Gore voted for it.  (That opposing that war, the sloppy conclusion of which lead directly to our catastrophic 2003 invasion, was probably the correct decision in hindsight is left unmentioned.)  He then goes on to note that in 2003, Obama was in a position to oppose the war without paying any political price for it.  Here’s the final paragraph:

But, just like all the Democrats who buckled in 2002, he wasn’t interested in being the antiwar candidate. Instead of challenging misguided popular sentiments about the wisdom of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, Obama chose to cater to them. This right war/wrong war distinction made for great politics in 2008. But as policy in 2010, it just doesn’t work. The question is whether it will be too late before he admits it.

What was previously implied has now been stated outright.  Kornacki is saying that if Obama had been braver as a candidate we could be on our way out of Afghanistan right now, instead of digging ourselves in deeper.  But “Instead of challenging misguided popular sentiments” ignores the political climate of the time.  Let’s not forget that Obama was lambasted numerous times for the sin of suggesting we communicate with Iran without the use of bombers.  The press, roughly 99.9% of whom spent all of 2007 convinced Hillary Clinton was a mortal lock for the Blue nomination, would’ve laughed him off stage left with Dennis Kucinich had he not toed the warmonger line on Afghanistan.

Once more, with feeling: Barack Obama would not be President if he had opposed both wars.  We’re spending billions to kill Americans and Afghans for no apparent reason and it’s agonizing.  I get that.  But there is a justification, however unpleasant: all those deaths and all that destruction and waste are worth it to keep the Reds out of power.  The United States of America (and places elsewhere) suffered staggering blows as a result of eight years of neoconservative foreign policy.  I can’t imagine what it would look like after four or eight more.

The juvenile bounds of polite discourse fall notoriously short of a lot of unpleasant truths, this is just one more.  And while you can lay blame on Obama, he’s a smart guy/he should know better/leaders have to lead, blah blah blah, this is not a problem that one man can solve, even a President (and certainly not some piss ant senator/candidate).  The deep pathology of blind pride and national righteousness that is every American’s birth right was ruthlessly exploited in the wake of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and anthrax.  Obama’s predecessor, who was never reviled by the press nearly as much as he was by the public, created a climate of almost unlimited fear and paranoia in which anyone who isn’t ankle deep in blood is considered dangerously naive.

There’s a decent case to be made that we have not actually won a war since we nuked Japan sixty-five years ago.  But the long and growing list of armed failure has not penetrated the national consciousness, to say nothing of the far shallower conventional political wisdom.  Far and away the most successful American troops of the last six and a half decades are the ones who sat in Germany and didn’t fight anybody.  With a few piffling exceptions, every time we’ve actually shot people has ended in stalemate or outright failure.  Yet the culture of win endures, in everything from profanely deluded Newsweek covers to high public officials like Leon Panetta.

Marry the unsupported mass delusion of inevitable American victory to our current national fashion for fearing Muslims, and things get even worse.  The unclenching of the national sphincter when it comes to Islam will not be accomplished in a year or even a decade.  From dropping the phrase “War on Terror” to actually removing troops from Iraq (something Bush the Younger floated many times but never did), Obama has taken a number of admiral steps in that direction.  But the fear is still so strong that he can’t get more than a thin slice of Congress to back him on closing Guantanamo, even though pretty much everyone agrees it’s a black mark on the nation and a hindrance to our foreign and military policies.  As gobsmacking and indefensible as his civil liberties policies have been, he is doing a terrific job when it comes to calming national hysteria.

I have no doubt that we’ll still be mucking around in Afghanistan when America goes to the polls in 2012.  But that’s a small, affordable catastrophe compared to that election being won by a Red who promises to get tough in Afghanistan and show Ahmadinejad (who is not, by the way, Iran’s actual leader) just how big our dicks really are.  It would not surprise me if historians some day conclude that Obama’s position on Afghanistan was a wholly cynical political ploy, but in this case it was a necessary one.  Would we be closer to leaving under a President Edwards or a second President Clinton, would either of them even have won the election?

Obama was the least bad in 2008, and he’ll be the least bad in 2012.  All the alternatives are worse, and that may not be much, but it’s more than we had, and for the time being it’s all we’ve got.

End note:  For a good example of the deadly political inertia that fucks up our country, see Kornacki’s piece from a few days ago on David Brooks’ latest hairball.  Taking Brooks to the woodshed isn’t hard, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing.  The sooner guys like him are laughed out of importance, the better off we’ll all be.  Other fun disembowelments of the perpetually foolish Brooks: LGM, and Taibbi twice.

Leave a Comment » | 2010 Election, 2012 Election, Afghanistan, I Love America, Obama Administration, Sophomoric Imperialism, The Art of the Possible | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

McChrystal: A Side Effect of Perpetual War

23 June 10
“Not to worry honey, we live in a highly technological age where fighting a war is as simple as turning off a light.” – Homer Simpson

Stanley McChrystal got shit canned earlier today for running his mouth in front of a Rolling Stone reporter after, apparently, too many Bud Light Limes.  It goes almost without saying that a war might be troubled when its highest general can be felled by a “hippie magazine” and watery beer.  More importantly, as Juan Cole pointed out this morning, is whether or not this will have any effect on our long term plans:

In short, we have no idea why US troops are being sent to Afghanistan at such an accelerating rate. It isn’t to fight al-Qaeda. And if it is mainly a matter of fighting the Taliban, why should we do that?

[…]

No wonder McChrystal was so frustrated that he went around his line of command to the press. The real reason for this contretemps is that Obama does not have a realistic, sharply defined set of goals in Afghanistan

A lack of defined goals didn’t stop us from invading Afghanistan in the first place (ditto Iraq), and it certainly won’t stop us from staying.  Indeed, President Obama said so himself after firing McChrystal, “It is a change in personnel, but it is not a change in policy.”  The people who cooked this up in the first place were not kidding when they coined the term “the long war”.

Lost in all of this is that, while the behavior of McChrystal and his inner circle was wildly irresponsible and easily firing worthy, he and they have good reasons to gripe.  The military is stuck fighting an endless guerilla war not because we desperately need to win, or even because there’s some important national interest at stake.  They’re fighting it because our political system here in America is badly broken.

Not that I expect people to notice what I say here at the ass end of the internet, but I’ve said this before and I’m sure I’ll say it again: Obama would not be President if he had promised to end both wars.  Promising to continue the war in Afghanistan was the tacit price our stupid political system demanded in exchange for promising to end the one in Iraq.

The steady withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, in the face of a fucked up election, continuing violence, and not so subtle opposition from dead-enders here at home, has been the silent success of the still young Obama Administration.  (And let’s hope he doesn’t chicken out as we get closer to zero.)  But it never would’ve gotten this far if we weren’t playing empire in Afghanistan.  The polite bloodlust of the Villagers must be sated, or they’d throw some huge fit casting Obama as a long haired, hippie idealist.  So we grind on in Afghanistan, and guys like McChrystal get caught in the gears.

That doesn’t excuse the behavior of McChrystal and his officers, of course, and good on Obama for pulling the trigger and firing him without undue drama or deliberation.  But resentments of this nature are inevitable when the civilians ask the soldiers to fight indefinitely, pausing only to grandstand and bleat about “the troops”.  It’s been commented on in many places and in many ways, but the disconnect between Here and Over There is enormous; and the fact that The Hurt Locker won some awards doesn’t mean shit to the people actually making the sacrifices.

There’s been a lot of talk of the civilian-military relationship as a result of this, but it’s one that goes both ways.  Yes, the military is absolutely subordinate, that is as it should be and threats to it must be taken very seriously, hence, McChrystal’s firing.  But after nine years of war, it’s very clear who the irresponsible member of this relationship is.  The civilians have fallen down on the job, and until they own up to it the military will keep griping.

Brief End Note:  What is it with disruptive generals and Scottish surnames?  Lots of people mentioned Douglas MacArthur in comparison to McChrystal, but the record holder for most insubordinate is easily George McClellan.  He went so far as to run against Lincoln in 1864, and got himself humiliated in the process.

1 Comment | Afghanistan, Sophomoric Imperialism | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

Idle Hands, Invisible Hands

20 June 10
“You there, fill it up with petroleum distillate, and re-vulcanize my tires, posthaste!” – C.M. Burns

Economist Brad DeLong asks a question:

I tell you. Writing the history of this episode is going to be next to impossible. “But why didn’t they see?!?” is what the students are all going to ask. And I have no answer…

The always perceptive Digby tries to answer:

It is going to be impossible. But I have a feeling it will not be because there is no answer. It will be because there are too many.

[…]

I think the War on the Unemployed (aka the War on the Deficit) is very much like the invasion of Iraq — a senseless, self-destructive, incomprehensible trainwreck that nobody truly understands, but which seems to have a life of its own.

She’s right about that second part, this has that same 2002-2003 feeling of a collective fantasy hijacking policy and presenting itself as fait accompli.  But as to the first part, it just isn’t that complicated.  The people in charge aren’t feeling any pain, nor do they see many other people in pain.  That’s it.  Red vs. Blue tribalism and the enduring myth of the Cadillac driving welfare queen play into it, but the ultimate factor is that life in high unemployment America hasn’t changed much for the people in power.

Recall that the people who beat the war drums the loudest prior to our blunder into Iraq were never the ones who were going to have to fight it or to pay for it.  In that same vein, today’s illustrious deciders are almost completely insulated from the negative effects of high unemployment.  The Republicans are strictly the party of the wealthy and the affluent, they don’t give two shits about unemployment.  The Democrats aren’t as bad, but the people who attend their fundraisers aren’t the kind who feel the sting of being economically useless either.  In 2009 (pdf), the unemployment rate for American adults with a bachelor’s degree or more was just 4.6%, for high school graduates it was 9.7%, and for adults without a high school diploma it was a whopping 14.7%.  Which kind of people are legislators and their friends, aides and advisors?  Which kind of people do they interact with on a daily basis?

The racial picture is even starker.  White levels of unemployment (again accounting for education) are just a bit lower than those of the overall population: 4.2% for the college educated, 9.0% for high school diploma, 13.9% for those without a high school diploma.  Now brace yourself for the black numbers: 7.2% with a college degree, 14.0% with a high school diploma, and a staggering 21.3% without.  The numbers for Hispanics aren’t quite as bad as those, but they aren’t pretty.  And these are the official numbers, which only count those who are working or looking for work.  The reality is worse.  Now ask yourself, how many non-college educated minorities does Alan Greenspan listen to on a daily basis?

The lives of the decision makers simply haven’t changed much.  Apple is still producing must have new gadgets; sports and entertainment continue to provide something to talk about at cocktail parties; all the shit in the Sky Mall catalog is still for sale.  It’s the same reason The Atlantic Monthly picked a preppy looking white kid as its poster boy for the unemployed, its readers wouldn’t care otherwise.  For those who haven’t lost their jobs, life goes on more or less as it had before.  Budgets might be a little tighter and some restrictions may apply, but True Blood is back, the Yankees are tied for first place, and everyone wants an iPad.  Wine still tastes good.

Against that backdrop, a 9.7% unemployment rate is just another number.  It’s a “bad” number, sure, but since all the human suffering it represents is neatly concealed, the fact that it’s a lot more important right now than the deficit is quickly lost.  The unemployment rate has been above 9% for a year now, but the world has not spun off its axis.  Consumer electronics keep getting better, summer movie season is here again, and the children of the people who are still employed can dream of $1,200 Jonas Brothers tickets.  Meanwhile, nearly one of every four children is living in poverty (and since the standards are so low the real number is undoubtedly worse) and nearly one in every five has worries about simply eating.  When dichotomies like that are perfectly ordinary, is it any wonder the unemployed are ignored?

There’s no mystery to it all, no complex and subtle interplay at work: the unemployed (and underemployed) are invisible to the people in charge.

Leave a Comment » | America's Elite, Institutionalized Stupidity, Unemployment Crisis | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

Better Late Than Never (American ETA: 2039)

16 June 10
“You’re asking me to live a lie, I don’t know if I can do that.” – Selma McClure
“It’s remarkably easy!” – Troy McClure

Yesterday the British government finally put to bed the most famous (a hit U2 song helps) tragedy of the Irish Troubles.  The report was twelve years in the making, and it’s now been thirty-eight years since Bloody Sunday, but the government, faced with overwhelming evidence and insulated by the passage of time, fessed up and admitted that it had been wrong.  BBC (naturally) has the details:

  • No warning had been given to any civilians before the soldiers opened fire
  • None of the soldiers fired in response to attacks by petrol bombers or stone throwers
  • Some of those killed or injured were clearly fleeing or going to help those injured or dying
  • None of the casualties was posing a threat or doing anything that would justify their shooting
  • Many of the soldiers lied about their actions
  • The events of Bloody Sunday were not premeditated

Also at that link you’ll find a four minute video of the remarkable speech given by recently elected – and Conservative – Prime Minister David Cameron.  The Prime Minister, who was only five at the time, made no effort to soften the report, nor to mitigate or dispute its conclusions.  He also uttered a line that some future American President may want to paraphrase: “You do not defend the British Army by defending the indefensible.”

We know a lot about the abusive excesses of the Bush and now Obama Administrations, whether it’s torture, warrantless wiretapping, war crimes of various stripes, summary executions, or the general undermining of the rule of law.  And, given the nature of government scandals, it’s very likely those things are just a few pieces of the nasty whole, most of which remains hidden.

What is quite certain is that more and more evidence, and more and more specifics, of our government’s various terrorism justified wrongdoings will come to light.  There are too many documents, too many e-mails, too many aggrieved parties.  Just look at the Physicians for Human Rights report about doctors unethically assisting in waterboarding, it was pieced together from declassified and heavily redacted documents.  No Bothans died to bring us that information, it was just a shitload of leg and legal work.  More is sure to follow.  Simply forgetting these things, as the Obama Administration is keen to do, is impossible.

Which brings us back to the British and this week’s long overdue mea culpa.  Bloody Sunday did a lot to radicalize Catholic dissent and predated the worst years of the Troubles.  It was bad for both sides and the resulting government cover up did nothing to further the cause or the government’s policies; it merely concealed the truth . . . for a while.  There’s an obvious lesson to be learned there, but for our government to heed it, important people would need to be embarrassed and inconvenienced, and that is not the order of the day here in America.  Too bad.

We’ve been violating our own laws in a futile chase of “security” since late 2001.  Here’s hoping it doesn’t take thirty-eight years, until 2039, for us to get over ourselves and admit we did bad.

Leave a Comment » | Institutionalized Stupidity, Places Other than America, United Kingdom, War on Terror | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

Vested Interests

13 June 10
“You are tampering with forces you can’t understand.  We have major corporations sponsoring this event.” – Mayor Quimby
“I hope you know you’re sponsoring a celebration for a murderous pirate.” – Lisa Simpson
“A pirate?  Well that’s hardly the image we want for Long John Silver’s!” – Corporate Sponsor Guy

There’s a nice, short article in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly making the case that the public perception of terrorists is wildly at odds with the rather inept realities of most terrorists.  The basic idea is that if we mocked terrorists more often, if we publicly exposed them as the fools that they mostly are, it would be easier to combat them.  From suicide bombers who don’t manage to kill anyone but themselves to dumbasses who can’t even do that, the litany of folly is pretty impressive:

In Afghanistan, as in many cultures, a manly embrace is a time-honored tradition for warriors before they go off to face death. Thus, many suicide bombers never even make it out of their training camp or safe house, as the pressure from these group hugs triggers the explosives in suicide vests. According to several sources at the United Nations, as many as six would-be suicide bombers died last July after one such embrace in Paktika.

The article goes on to mention the stupidity of the Underpants Bomber and the failed Times Square bomber.  What gets left out, however is telling.

Nowhere do the names of “Bush” or “Obama” appear, nor the terms “Republican” or “Democrat”.  That an article ostensibly about the public psychology of terrorism does not mention the vastly different approaches of the two sides is a damning oversight.  Bush the Younger and his cadre of fanatics spent seven years deliberately stoking public anxieties.  They did it so effectively and for so long that the childish press corps has come to expect nothing else.  Witness the buzz of the past several weeks, as they actually debate how effectively Barack Obama can pretend to be angry in public.

Yes, a lot of terrorists are dope smoking, porn watching, morons.  The Atlantic piece paints the gap between perception and reality as one of simple ignorance: If only the public knew! But the reality is that the Reds push that image deliberately because it fits their theme of an America that’s fragile and vulnerable and in need of hard nosed Republican leadership.  The press basically lets them get away with it because it fits a well defined narrative and the press is nothing if not intellectually lazy.  (That it allows them to produce scary news pieces that result in pageviews and Nielsen points doesn’t hurt either.)

It’s all well and good to want to puncture a myth.  But when there are a lot of powerful people with vested interests in keeping that myth, it’s just blowing smoke if you don’t take a stand and point out why that myth exists in the first place.

Leave a Comment » | Institutionalized Stupidity, The Art of the Possible, War on Terror | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

An Afghan Reminder

9 June 10
“That’s it, I’ll run for President!  Drop a whole mess of bombs and put Merle Haggard on the Supreme Court.” – Duke Phillips’ Inner Devil

The news from Afghanistan continues to be grim.  The one thousandth American recently fell, and by some reckonings it is now the longest war in American history (that statement, though basically accurate, is open to some debate).  Every time that open wound passes another macabre milestone, denominated in corpses or time, plenty of people pop up to ask why exactly we’re still fighting there.

What’s strange about this is that even Blue bloggers who paid attention during the entire seventeen month soap opera of the Democratic nominating process seem to be under the impression that our war in Afghanistan has anything to do with rational goals.  Let’s remember that had candidate Obama done anything but promise to continue the Afghan War, he would’ve been laughed out of the nominating process before it even began.  The show dogs that make up the bulk of the political press corps roundly criticized him as dangerously naive and foolish merely for wanting to talk to Iran.  If he had said, “I want to end both wars” he would’ve been shuffled off stage to wallow in the primping room with Dennis Kucinich.

The sad and undeniable truth is that we are still at war in Afghanistan because Bush the Younger broke America and we’re still fixing it.  The indifferent bloodlust of the Very Serious People is proof of that.  Imagine the howls from the peanut gallery if Obama “showed weakness” by winding down the Afghan War.  He’d be instantly derided as a typically vaginal Democrat too weak to get in there and fuck America’s enemies like a proper, dick swinging daddy figure.  Bush the Younger spent eight years lying to and terrorizing the American public, and in doing so he created an alternate reality in which all his batshit crazy ideas became conventional wisdom.

It’s going to take time to bring some measure of sanity and reality-based thinking back to our political discourse.  In the meantime, all we can do is wind things down as fast as our stupid politics will allow.  Along those lines, and to his credit, Obama has shown admirable resoluteness in the face of sly implications that we ought to stay in Iraq.  And the fact that he even mentioned July 2011 as a date to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan marks a big improvement over his predecessor.

The Afghan War must continue because there is simply too much at stake here in America to take the political risk of ending it simultaneously with the Iraq War.  Another four or eight years of neoconservative foreign policy – the inevitable result of a Red victory in 2012 – would be far more destructive and deadly than a few more years of a pointless war in Afghanistan.  It’s grim math, and it’s sad as hell to ask Americans and Afghans to keep dying for it, but the specter of another “invade first, ask questions later” Administration is too bloody to ignore.  You want to know what we’re doing in Afghanistan?  We’re keeping the Reds out of 1600, and that’s worth the fighting for.

Leave a Comment » | Afghanistan, I Love America, Obama Administration, Sophomoric Imperialism | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

Plata o Plomo

6 June 10
“You didn’t see nothin’.” – Fat Tony
“I don’t know why people are always bad mouthing the mafia.” – Eddie

A couple of weeks ago, there was a great article in The New Yorker about Mexican drug gangs.  In quite a few places, the gangs have basically taken over the local and state government apparatuses and now function as the primary providers of law and order.  The people and officials who actually live there are given a simple choice: silver or lead.  Take the criminal’s money, or get killed.  The federal Mexican government has sent in the army to deal with this, with predictably bloody results.  Many, if not most, of the people who actually live there seem to prefer the gangs to the federales, for the simple and understandable reason that after the feds came, the rate of violence shot way up:

[Mexican President] Calderón, on a visit to Juárez the previous week, had been confronted by demonstrators.  In a city where more than twenty-six hundred people were killed in drug-related violence last year, and where more than nine hundred have already died this year, the demonstrators were not protesting against the cartels and their ubiquitous hit men.  They were demanding the withdrawal of the Army.

Sadly, the full text of the article is not available on-line, but suffice it to say it is well worth reading in full even if you have to go out of your way a little.  The violence that’s going on in Mexico is almost unfathomable.  Baltimore, Maryland, home of The Wire and known in some circles as “Bodymore, Murderland”, had 238 homicides in 2009.  At roughly 2,600, Juárez has more than ten times – an order of fucking magnitude – more murders.  (Granted, Juárez is a bigger city, but still.)

And the bodies are only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.  Kidnapping for fun and profit is routine.  Extortion and intimidation fail as descriptors of what’s going on.  And behind all of it is corruption so endemic that it’s basically its own governing system.  According to the article, the conviction rate for state crimes is 1.8% and the police are just a subsidiary of the gangs.  As horrorshows go, the situation in Mexico is as bad as you’ll find.

There is only one problem with the article, and given its scope, length, and bad-ass reporting, it’s a very minor one.  The ye olde taboo against open discussion of the fact that our stupid drugs laws cause all this remains firmly in place.  Not that it isn’t mentioned:

Tens of billions of dollars in drug money is believed to cross the border heading south each year, much of it in bulk cash shipments.  More than eighty per cent of the weapons that have been seized in Mexico and that could be traced originated in the U.S.  The outrage of many Mexicans over this avalanche of military-grade firearms is matched only by their impotent anger over the bottomless U.S. demand for illegal drugs.  Our appetites, our wealth, our laws seem to be conspiring to destroy their country.

The only thing to quibble with there is the meek qualifier “seem to be” when a nice and simple “are” would be far more accurate.  Our appetites, our wealth, our laws are conspiring to destroy their country.  Is there really any doubt about that?

Not that we don’t try to do our part.  One last quote:

The great majority of the drugs go north, to the United States, where La Familia has a formidable distribution network.  In October, 2009, American law enforcement conducted a two-day sweep against the network that yielded three hundred arrests in nineteen states, more than seven hundred pounds of methamphetamine, sixty-two kilograms of cocaine, nearly a thousand pounds of marijuana, more than a hundred vehicles, a hundred and forty-four weapons, and $3.4 million in U.S. currency.  Robert S. Mueller, the director of the F.B.I., said of the sweep, “We have dealt a substantial blow to a group that has polluted our neighborhoods with illicit drugs and has terrorized Mexico with unimaginable violence.”

Three months later, in Michoacán, I heard no mention of the big American drug bust.  Few people seemed to know of it.  None considered it a significant blow to La Familia.  Three million dollars was not that much money to them.

And I’m sure the massive investigation that resulted in that pinprick raid cost the drug using American taxpayers a hell of a lot more than three million dollars.  But by the twisted logic of the drug war, it’s worth it to let the world know we’re doing something.  Whether or not that something is actually effective is, of course, never seriously asked.

There’s a lot of other news these days, but that’s always the case.  The drug war has been going on for decades and has basically never gotten the attention it deserves.  The recent years of staggering violence in Mexico are just the latest symptom, only given play here when bullets find the occasional gringo.  President Obama, our third consecutive chief executive to have used illegal drugs, made his contribution to this bright lie with his new drug policy last month.  The fact that it is, on the whole, slightly less insane than previous ones doesn’t mean that it isn’t batshit crazy.  The war, and all of its senseless casualties, will continue.  And places like Mexico will bear the burden of killing each other at our behest, with our guns and our money.

Leave a Comment » | Institutionalized Stupidity, Mexico, Places Other than America, Print is Dead, The New Yorker, War on Drugs, equus altus morium | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

Trending Down

2 June 10
“Heck, it’s not my job to talk people out of killing themselves.” – Chief Wiggum

Israel took another deranged lurch towards its own destruction earlier this week.  Much like the botched war on Lebanon four years ago and the botched assault on Gaza two years ago, Israel managed to inflict pretty much all the casualties and yet finds itself ever closer to becoming an international pariah state.  Bra-vo.

To make matters even worse, this time the people Israel managed to kill weren’t stateless Palestinians or Lebanese the world forsook long ago.  No, these were Turks.  Turkey has a strong military, is strategically located in terms of oil and gas transport, and, oh yeah, is a NATO member.  Israel can kill Palestinians with impunity, they can kill Lebanese with almost the same abandon, but they cannot kill Turks willy nilly.

Naturally, the Turkish government is pissed off.  They convened special sessions of both NATO and the UN Security Council.  The result of the latter meeting was an unprecedented condemnation of Israel that Juan Cole called “head-spinning in its implications.”  With the exception of the knee-jerk, pro-Likud usual suspects here in America, no one is defending Israel’s actions.  The unanimity of the international outcry thus far has been stunning.  Whatever the eventual conclusions of the investigation into what happened, Israel has already greatly harmed itself.

At this point it’s worth pausing to remember just how swift Israel’s fall from grace has been.  Ten years ago, Ehud Barack was Prime Minister and there was still some hope for a final settlement between him and Yasser Arafat.  That all came apart in the summer of 2000, was followed by Ariel Sharon’s catastrophic visit to the Temple Mount, the Second Intifada, the destructions of Palestinian Authority, and all the rest.  It was barely three years ago that Jimmy Carter was widely castigated for using the word “apartheid” to describe Israel; then four months ago ex-Prime Minister and sitting Defense Minister Ehud Barack used the exact same term and no one batted an eye.

Israel is becoming a shunned state, diplomatically and culturally.  Even in the relatively apolitical realm of sports, the first harbingers of complete isolation have already begun.  Israel’s Arab citizens are also becoming increasingly isolated from their government, an Israeli Arab member of the Knesset was even aboard the Freedom Flotilla.  Every story and sign out there points to an Israel that is not only isolated from the larger world, but is also stratifying itself internally, and this week’s events will only serve to strengthen both of those trends.

The Jewish State is demonstrably worse off than it was ten years ago, and killing a bunch of unarmed Turkish civilians in international waters isn’t going to help matters at all.  The bulwark of American support, while still strong, is clearly weakening (and the long term outlook is terrible).  But even if US support were guaranteed perpetually, the US cannot save Israel; only Israel can save itself.  The 2000s were catastrophic, and between the tiff with the Obama Administration over settlements and killing of those Turks, the 2010s aren’t off to a good start.  Either the Israeli people and government elect to bring some sanity to their policies, or they’re in for another rough decade.  Anyone who claims to support Israel ought to ask themselves just what it will look like after ten more years of this.

Leave a Comment » | Israel, Places Other than America | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos