The above image came from Arnaldo Dumindin's online history of the Philippine-American War, 1899-1902. I think of this conflict for several reasons, as the last granules of 2009 and the 21st Century Aughts slip away. The image at left is the unfortunate Chandra Levy.
The book describes Teddy Roosevelt's effort through his Secretary of War William Howard Taft who was dispatched in 1905 on a Pacific cruise. The voyage resulted in secret and unconstitutional treaties that caused our engagement there and laid fuses for what ignited the Pacific Theatre of World War II, an almost every major conflict following, resulting in tens of millions dead.
It was the culmination of the "White Man's Burden" philosophy that guided the U.S. westward, "following the sun."
Quoting the U .S. military commander Gen. Arthur MacArthur (Douglas MacArthur's father), Bradley "pointedly describes a too familiar situation. “General MacArthur described a depressing quagmire where the U.S. Army controlled only 117 miles out of a total of 116,000 square miles, a hostile country where Americans could not venture out alone and a shell-shocked populace whose hatred for their oppressors grew each day,” he writes. “The Imperial Cruise” is all too persuasive in its visions of history repeating itself."
Well, as Mark Twain -- who opposed this imperialist gambit -- observed, history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
If you don't believe it, look the recent headlines. It's chilling.
There's a familiar scene at the end of Charlie Wilson's War in which Wilson tries to get Congressional appropriations for building schools in Afghanistan. It's a powerful glimpse into why we're there now -- because of the mess the Soviets left, and how our covert assistance helped dislodge them and ultimately cause the collapse of Communist rule. But an exasperated Wilson, when told he can't get the money, says this is what always happens. We go in and change the world and then we leave. 'We always leave."
That's a bit disingenuous. The U.S. today maintains bases in Germany, Japan and Korea, and we're still in Central Europe following the horrors of Serb-Croat atrocities and civil war.
We invaded the Phillippines for little cause, after buying the country for $20 million, and then unsatisfied with Filipino administration and courts, decided to go and slaughter them into our way of doing things.
Of course, we did the same thing to Native Americans, and a photograph reproduced by Bradley in Imperial Cruise of native dead in a trench at Wounded Knee, bears startling resemblance to the one shown above, that also appears in the book. Mark Twain complained of U.S. imperialism, but wouldn't admit that we did the same damn thing to the Indians. And then there's the whole slavery thing. But facing fault there would cause the nation to admit, like the Fonz, that it was w-w-w-r -wr-wrong. There's lately come various apologies for various crimes and errors on our part, but of course, this doesn't help the 600,000 Filipino war dead. Or the millions of Indians wiped away. That we weren't any better than other colonial powers of the period is a difficult view to take.
This is tough reading.
I think of all this, too, because we are at the end of the Aughts. They started with anxiety about The End of the World -- remember Y2K? Then came 9/11 and that wiped away the Chandra Levy Washington D.C. murder mystery and the threat of killer sharks.
Now, at the end of the Aughts, there's still anxiety about the end of the world, with real and imagined fears of nuclear potential in Iran and Korea, and terrorists. Following 9/11, there was supposed to be a new serious to the media, but instead, thanks to TMZ and millions of blogs, no, we're instead distracted by narcissistic party-crashers at the White House and Tiger Woods' peccadilloes.
There's been a whole slew of movies about the world ending in various ways from comets to zombie-causing plagues. Seems like every other program on the History Channel is about decoding Nostradamus or the Bible or some other hidden mystery that indicates the end is nigh.
Conspiracy theory has become a kind of civil religion. The political world is wildly divided and toxic. One side regards the other as some form of alien life form. (Indeed, some people believe they really are from out of space, or inside the Earth)
And the people who believe this stuff breed and vote.
Anyway, the Teens of the 21st century look more and more like the beginning of the 20th.
Happy New Year. I'm going to get a few stiff drinks.
The Inaugaration And What I Saw There And some thoughts on the first week
Your semi-occasional bloggist buddy, captured here by Amie Oliver, on Jan. 20, 2009, Washington D.C., D and 7th streets Northwest. The Mall is in the background, where the tent roof is visible.
We 'd run through the bazaar of instant entrepreneurs hawking Obama buttons, T-shirts, socks, finger and toe warmers, commemorative pamphlets, and other assorted Barack-phernalia when Amie needed to avail herself of a Porta Pottie.
We'd been informed that D.C. had helpfully transported some 50,000 of them to the crowd centers. In the end, it never seemed to have mattered, as published reports stated that most of them were less than at half of their carrying capacity when they were retrieved. So people made other arrangements.
Amie's experience was less than pristine. The observation as she staggered out, "It's appropriate that after eight years of George Bush, I'm wading through shit."
As the saying goes, "Après moi, le déluge” (“After me, the deluge"), attributed to various august personages, who were either forced, or making their way out. Certainly, following Bush, we are all having to bail, and needing bail outs.
"The pursuit of politics is a habit, like all habits strengthened by habit and atrophied by disuse. ... Surely, the political mentality cannot train itself in an atmosphere of persistent frustration, or with the sense that it is all a sham... There was some reason to think that the political life of the Republic a spectacle, remote and slightly ludicrous. Parliamentary debates, with their legalism and their occasional vehemence, had a curious air of unreality about them: party hacks quibbled, orated and insulted another while millions were hungry. Politics seemed a game to which all must contribute but which only politicians could win. "
The streams of winter-bundled people pouring across The Mall that CNN was showing at 5:30 a.m. that day reminded both the commentator and me of the crowds surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall. Theirs was a swift exuberance, an elation, such as I'd witnessed on the streets of Richmond on election night. The police just stood off, puzzled, unable to see anybody really drunk on anything except jubilation.
Our Chinatown bus left from Boulevard and Broad at 7 a.m. and we carried little, as backpacks weren't going to be permitted on the Mall. My anticipation of actually getting there wasn't high. Then again, I'd asked off work just a few weeks ago and hadn't even tried to finagle anything via my assorted "gunnexions" as Ned Carroway overhears somebody say at one of Jay Gatsby's parties.
No, we were going up to throw ourselves on the currents of history, and we'd end up where we ended up. But we convinced ourselves, almost at the last minute, to make a go of it. We could've stayed here and watched a CSPAN broadcast at the Byrd and had celebratory brunch at the Deli, but. No. We were in geographical terms this close. And so, onto the bus we went.
And I want not to sound like curmudgeon, but I suspect I'm turning into one. Because, I am happy to be rid of the prior administration. But on this blog I've expressed my own dissatisfaction about the two party system, that somehow the process isn't quite right, with a population now of 300 million having just a duo of candidates to choose from, who, in my view, should wear their sponsorships on their suits like NASCAR drivers. The massive amounts of money it takes to get serious traction in a national election makes a sham of true democracy, the Electoral College, the lobbyists, the "militarist-conservative combine" (the phrase Gay quotes Friedrich Meinecke describing the cabal that managed to wreck Wilhelmine Germany). All these elements disturb me.
The exit names on the route up I-95 are redolent with the nation’s history. We passed by Fredericksburg, where President James Monroe practiced law, and there at Marye's Heights during the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Confederates massacred Union troops marching right into their guns; Chancellorsville, where Lee split his army in the face of greater numbers and Stonewall Jackson, exhibiting his own audacity, got himself shot by his own men when he was too far forward, and Occoquan, where in 1917, women protesting for their right to vote were forcibly arrested and some tortured. Their treatment shamed our Virginian President Woodrow Wilson, who said he'd keep us out of war then, in the words of E.L. Doctorow, waged it like an affronted school teacher, which Wilson essentially was, and a Dixiecrat before they had a name. It's Wilson's views -- not out of step with his time, by the way -- that brings to mind what I heard a comedian say not long ago, "Look, we've had 43 crackers as president. About time a brother got in there."
During our journey north, being of a historic bent, I thought of John Mitchell Jr., the Richmond editor of the early 20th-century African-American weekly newspaper The Richmond Planet. A courageous person, an eloquent writer and speaker, and a capable businessman, Mitchell’s experiences mirrored those of other blacks of accomplishment. During the 1890s, he sat on the city’s board of aldermen, but by 1911, he was restricted from voting (though he ran for governor in 1921), and the city sought to divest him and others of real estate they held that was considered to be in “white” neighborhoods.
Mitchell exhorted his readers toward self-sufficiency and community involvement (and community organizing), similar to his colleague Maggie Walker.
Yet, for all my dislike of the past administration, and perhaps its very real war crimes, we did not get rid of Hitler or even "Baby" Doc Duvalier. We kicked to the curb incompetent, arrogant, ideologues. Though, a friend of mine argues that Bush may have been an ideologue, or turned into one because he didn't possess any real ideology, but he was surrounded by nihilists who were interested in one thing: power.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear Obama in an interview, smile, and say, yes, you have to wonder about anybody wanting to be leader of the free world. He was repeating basically what he told the New Yorker way back in October 2006, referencing then getting into the U.S. Senate and from his own Audacity of Hope: "I think that what [Senator Robert Byrd is] absolutely right about is that we tend to think about politics in terms of individual ambition, and most of us who get there—I write in the book that, no matter what people say, there’s some level of megalomania involved in getting to the United States Senate."
And he followed that up in the television interview with understanding the need for people to keep him check and offer countering views. Well. Let's hope so.
I personally like how he started explaining aloud the meaning of the executive orders he's been signing. (You'd think though from YouTube comments he was doing something illegal)
All that said, I guess being a U.S. person, and never having experienced such outpouring of national joy and enthusiasm for a politician, it's a little unnerving. Upwards of 3 million people in D.C., all waving flags, and tens of thousands chanting his name, and his voice echoing off the marble walls, and the booing of Joe Liebermann and Justice Clarence Thomas (by both blacks and whites). Just makes me .... a bit uneasy.
Just like watching the huge "Obamastock" concert the Sunday prior. The overarching theme was elation, but, also elegy..and...the symbolism and the names invoked: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy -- all of them martyred. Even Stephen King in the latest Esquire admits to having that fear, despite his jubilation over not having to move his family to New Zealand. But, he adds, he's in the fright business.
I got kind of weirded out when they brought out the bald eagles, and they spread their wings and were so amazing, and I thought: this is a ritual, and it matters, but the signals are all confused. Are we praising him or burying him -- if not in reality, but in effigy?
I'm nervy. Not my business per se, just my inclination.
The other day, on some news show, I saw a clip played of Clinton from his first term. He looked do vital and big haired. And I don't have quite the same warmth whenever he'd pop up during the past eight years. The recent events have finally made Bill Clinton look antiquated; like some spotted and streaked surviving bit of film from the early days of movies.
"Much of this restless expenditure of energy might be self-important busy work....or the public acting out of private passions, but it was at least what is normally called political activity: political talk, canvassing, voting. Foolish politics is still politics.
...When the democratic Weimar Constitution opened the door to real politics, the Germans stood at the door, gaping, like peasants bidden to the palace, hardly knowing how to conduct themselves." -- Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider by Peter Gay
****************************************************************************** At one point, when we were lost, trying to find our way to the house of friends as bitter cold air hit us in the face, and having received erroneous directions from both overwhelmed police and apparently intoxicated volunteers, we ambled by a jerry-rigged Obama bodega. They had his Grant Park acceptance speech playing but remixed upon a jazz funk beat. And it sounded more resonant, even more noble, said Amie.
"And, above all," his voice soared, "I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, callused hand by callused hand...."
We didn't make it to the Mall. The Chinatown Bus, rerouted from its usual stop, took us to the Fort Totten Metro. Staked into the yard of a brick rancher, a hand-made sign: "We Voted For THAT one."
Surging into the Totten station, a swirl of newspaper and weekly pushers, and nowhere a Washington Post, only the Washington Times. I never did get one, not on this day, nor for the day after.
Then two separate incidents of people falling onto the tracks occurred, one at Judiciary Square and the other at Gallery Place. This caused a snag in travel.
Officials closed the Mall gates at just after 9:15 a.m. We didn’t make it into Union Station until about 9:45. There, we realized the chill air was seeping into our shoes, so Amie bought us extra socks — argyles — at $10 a pop.
Around his neck were badges and indications of his place and rank. He had a front-row seat to history. He described through his cell phone his passel of permissions for assorted functions: “I have a good package. No, my package is excellent,” then adding, with a wry chuckle, “as befits a king.”
Meanwhile, I was pulling my new argyle socks over top the ones I was wearing.
We took the peon pedestrian route from Union Station, everywhere confronted by massive and enthusiastic (but cold) crowds. As the moment of swearing-in approached, I realized we weren’t going to make it to the Mall or even anywhere close to a Jumbotron.
Thus, at D and 7th streets N.W., in front of a FedEx Kinko’s, we witnessed the event. This was close to the Wooly Mammoth Theatre, with banners for the current production — Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind — in evidence.
A woman named Debbie gave her miniature Casio television to another woman, who held the device so that almost a dozen of us could see the newly minted president as we heard his voice ringing against Washington’s marble walls, albeit with a slight delay on the wee TV’s visuals. It was a United Colors of Benetton group.
The strands of John Williams’ "Air and Simple Gifts," played by Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, wafted over the crowd and called our attention more than any other voices; serious, even somber music, with a tribute to “Simple Gifts,” the Shaker hymn immortalized by Aaron Copland in Appalachian Spring.
I found myself getting interviewed by Julio Cuestas of La Mira TV, “el informativo hispano,” covering — I think — issues for an audience in Peru.
“What is your opinion of all that’s going on here today?” I was asked. And I replied that it was a momentous occasion, unlike any other day in the history of the United States.
Almost immediately after the inaugural address, the temperature plummeted, and an icy air began hitting us in the face as though somebody had left a door open in Alaska.
And the city’s streets, within a few hours, looked as though downtown D.C. was coming off a weeklong bender, which, in a way, it was. Papers blew everywhere, soldiers in camouflage appeared, and thousands of people, many of them grinning or hugging, wandered around hoping to glimpse something.
We collapsed into a pile of unmet expectations and heavy winter wraps at the Corner Bakery at 14th and F streets. We joined a collection of people hoping to catch a glimpse of the new POTUS in the inaugural parade. Amie couldn’t pick up the WiFi on her iPod Touch; there were just too many people vying for a signal.
Outside, a woman perhaps my mother’s age clung to a tree while balancing on a short, narrow iron fence. She stood there for the better part of two hours, smiling, her face getting redder as she got colder. She never saw anything, near as I know, because we certainly did not.
We decided to try and reach a better viewing spot and managed to get across 14th, against one of the locked gates where, I’d later see on television, the president and first lady emerged from their limousine to walk and wave. Before we left, all we saw was a soldier dressed in 18th-century-style garb carrying a halberd.
Later that afternoon, later than we wanted due to conflicting directions from police and badge-wearing (and seemingly intoxicated) volunteers, we arrived at the house of friends living in the city’s northeast quadrant. On our way there, we walked past the looming offices of Douglas Development Corporation, the company of Douglas Jemal, who has bought and is restoring a number of Richmond buildings.
Our friends fed us hot soup, let us prop up our feet and allowed us to watch what we didn’t see on their television. Our hike back to Chinatown was frosty — and Starbucks denied us potty privileges.
The bus arrived at its customary location at around 10 p.m. — 15 minutes later than scheduled due to traffic — and went in circles trying to get out of town.
That I had the opportunity to be among the throngs on this Jan. 20, 2009, was gratifying. At home, I watched the president and first lady taking their turn on the dance floor at various balls.
But now, the party is over, and there’s work to be done.
Finally, I'm not so happy about all of BHO's Cabinet appointments. True, he has access to more information than I do, and he made the deals and compromises to get to his position, but, from the very outside peering in, some of this just stinks.
I don't care how brilliant Timothy Geithner is, he was at Lehman Brothers, and he didn't pay his taxes. He paid his debt, with interest, but his imminent appointment hastened his actions. This just doesn't look right.
People as diverse as Jim Cramer and Becky at Just A Girl Wearing Short Shorts don't see the sense of this choice.
"I'm not clairvoyant. Nobody's clairvoyant. But the odds favored what I said" — I think he's talking about his rant in August 2007 or maybe Lehman Brothers having the DNR tag hung on its toe — "and all of the people in the thick of things knew it. All of 'em. So it's amazing that Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke really didn't know at all. They really didn't know at all. Just this incredible combustible combination of ideology and idiocy layered over no homework has made it so that the country's on the brink.
"I knew the guy who led the conference call at Bear. He had given me a tremendous briefing on the CDO market, and it was either 100 percent lies, or he was an idiot. And I went in to see Fuld" — that'd be Dick Fuld, Lehman's CEO — "and his briefing was either 100 percent lies, or he was an idiot. There's no middle ground, no maybe he was just mistaken. No. He's either just brain-dead, or he was just lying to me."
Hard to believe these guys are idiots, I say.
"They're not idiots. They lied."
Wow.
"Remember — I have no subpoena power. I can't indict. There's no Cramer grand jury. But there is Mad Money."
Lesbian libertarian or libertarian lesbian or, well, Becky, who is Just A Girl In Short Shorts, who, well, favored Sarah Palin as McCain's V-P pick months before McCain or the RNC made him choose her. And then Becky had some 'splainin' to do once she got her wish. Near as I can figure, because she's an empowered woman who is anti-abortion that she should've...eh. I'll let you suss it out. P.S. Humorless killjoys got many of her images censored. Even those of Palin.
Not only is she a committed altruist, but she's also just a financial wiz and commands respect among her peers -- and if you want some real change, well. This would be one.
Becky wrote then:
"The real nice thing about Diane Garnick is not only does she know virtually everything there is to know about all the bizarre mortgage derivatives, she has always been one of the good guys—protecting pension funds—and was an early advocate of requiring companies to include all of their derivatives on the face of their financial statements—something which is still not happening as these financial companies attempt to hide and obscure the extent and value of the derivatives they hold.
Garnick warns that the government's accommodation of the banks' request to change the mark to market rule will just let these financial institutions further obscure the true value (or non-value) of their assets."
But the bottom line is: Geithner just was a lousy pick. I don't care how supposedly brilliant he is. That he's a known quantity around D.C. gets him no extra points from me.
And don't just take it from me or Becky, or even Cramer. Margaret Carlson, Bloomberg News columnist and former Time magazine White House correspondent, critiques the choices of both Geithner and Eric Holder at Justice, here.
Then I'm underwhelmed by the choice of Arne Duncan, a total Chicago crony -- he's played in Obama's pick up basketball games. According to Alfie Kohn in The Nation recently, and looking at him elsewhere, he's just a counterintuitive choice, because he's from the test-crazy Standards of Learning school that's done more to wreck public education in this country than anything else.
Keeping Gates at Defense, despite the rationalization that it's bad to change horses in the middle of a war -- well, hell, we've switched Commander-in-Chief, and there's still Rumsfedlian appointees to be rooted out. In addition, as George McGovern quite eloquently points out in this Sunday's Washington Post, "staying the course" in Aghanistan should not be an option. The British couldn't control the country, the Soviets got destroyed by their effort (with help from us and that Bin-Laden guy) and, besides, you can't win against guerrilla war. They play you out and play you out until you're just played out.
Besides, it's just too damn expensive.
And my guess is, OBL is dead anyway. Otherwise, we're just there for the oil pipeline (and the poppies). And I don't even want to think in those terms. It's just so damn ugly.
McGovern posits:
"So let me suggest a truly audacious hope for your administration: How about a five-year time-out on war -- unless, of course, there is a genuine threat to the nation?
During that interval, we could work with the U.N. World Food Program, plus the overseas arms of the churches, synagogues, mosques and other volunteer agencies to provide a nutritious lunch every day for every school-age child in Afghanistan and other poor countries. Such a program is now underway in several countries approved by Congress and the United Nations, under the auspices of the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Act. (Forgive the self-serving title.) Although the measure remains painfully underfunded, with the help of other countries, we are reaching millions of children. We could supplement these efforts with nutritional packages for low-income pregnant and nursing mothers and their infants from birth through the age of 5, as is done here at home by WIC, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.
Is this proposal pie-in-the-sky? I don't think so. It's food in the stomachs of hungry kids. It would draw them to school and enable them to learn and grow into better citizens. It would cost a small fraction of warfare's cost, but it might well be a stronger antidote to terrorism. There will always be time for another war. But hunger can't wait."
Finally, I'm still not satisfied with Hilary Clinton at State. That was a compromise maneuver, and we'll see how Machiavellian it turns out to have been. I just think of General Wesley Clark pottering around down in Arkansas somewhere, having gotten a big, "Diss-missed!"from BHO.
In the end, after this hoop and hype have subsided, we've got a melluva hess here in the US of A. I just wish we could freaking deal with it straight-in-the-face. BHO is, I think, giving it a go.
So we are going up on the Chinatown Bus to the mass celebration of Obama's inauguration. My Amie has some rather nostalgic memories of Clinton's inaugural, and there was a kind of fair environment on the Mall, and great music, for free.
Well, this is not that.
After seeing the extravaganza on Sunday, this is not a trip to the fair.
She got the tickets for us two weeks ago before we knew what this was shaping up to be; now, with the weather perhaps to call for snow, we learn that umbrellas are prohibited. Bring a plastic trash bag and a piece of cardboard to stand on, the Washington Post counseled.
I'm ecstatic as a citizen of the republic to see this event come to pass in my lifetime. The pomp and pageantry attending his elevation to the post, I certainly appreciate it from the show business angle. And I must confess, as I've said elsewhere in this blog, this entire process has been like The. Best. West Wing. Ever.
I see him and his family, rocking back and forth to Stevie Wonder, and I still cannot believe it's happening. Doesn't seem possible or real. And that's me, a newly minted 48-year-old white guy from Richmond, Va. What the sensation must be to African Americans, I can only imagine, and really, only imagine.
But once all the music's echoes have faded, and the roar of the crowds subsided into the usual noise of traffic in the nation's capital, what Barack Hussein Obama is confronted with is a multiple collection of crises and controversies the likes of which none of his immediate, living predecessors have confronted.
A continuing war in Afghanistan for an ambiguous conclusion is folly; the British couldn't control that country, the Soviets got wrecked there (in part thanks to eventual covert U.S. assistance), and there's no reason for us to think our luck will be any different. That's a sign of arrogance that is more of the past than the apparent present we've voted for. What's there is an oil pipeline and opium.
The bailout mishigas is going nowhere.
And that's just for starters.
Our Comcast was out this past weekend, and my wife put in a DVD of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. At one point, the parvenu Lyndon is beating up his step son during a chamber concert. The audience watches both appalled and entertained. But all the sudden his wealthy friends stop calling, and like Hogarth's Rake, all his bills come "with a hasty unanimity." This sequence reminds me of our country's current situation.
Barack has an impossible job ahead of him. I cannot think of what will come next.
We'll be standing there, with a few million people by the Jumbotron watching him take the oath and cheering, too. And hoping this can be a new day, and not just a change of scenery.
Image: Lord of the Rings Movie Shots. The electorate last night was sent down the river and asked to gawk up at these two candidates who performed in a fashion that wouldn't have persuaded anybody who hasn't already made up their minds. I was disappointed that there weren't greater and wider differences between the two of them. And as a nation, we're preparing to go over the falls with one.
Before any members of the billion-eyed audience want to hurl virtual tomatoes, hear me out.
I was more confused than enlightened by this debate between McCain and Obama in Oxford, Mississippi, hyped by the media like a Ali-Frazier bout, or an Idiocracy scene. The two debaters seemed tone deaf to the tenor of the times.
Jim Lehrer urging them to speak directly to each other was annoying, as was the disconcerting number of times Our Mr. Change agreed with Foxy Grandpa, or the way in which the oldster tried clucking his tongue about how the kid doesn't know the difference between strategy and tactics. (Actually, it was and is a magazine, if you were a war gamer back when).
I was neither impressed nor reassured that the Old One will be overcome. And I almost threw something at the television when he got indignant about his record, recalling that he'd won no "Miss Congeniality" awards in the Senate, and was known as "The Sheriff." Why, why no mention was made of his involvement with the Keating Five (not a R & B group from the 1960s) and the savings and loan debacle, a foreshadowing of the Fun House Hall of Mirrors show we're going through now. Yes, McCain ended up accused of just "poor judgment" and he contributed money he'd earned from the scandal to the U.S. Treasury, but even he's admitted that the affair will probably be on his tombstone. If you care to, you can read a 2000 clarifying piece about the Keating Five here.
A statement Obama made I think two days ago at the Mayflower Hotel was quite true, though. In four months, one of them will be inheriting this mess.
Obama didn't really get to score major points; McCain smirked and crackled like the villain in a 19th century melodrama, and at certain angles gives me a weird impression of resembling the elder Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin, for the record, is funnier. Obama handled himself quite well, though some of his positions, frankly, surprised me.
The basic fundamentals were frightful. Obama thinks sending more troops to Afghanistan will accomplish anything. That section of the world has humbled numerous grand plans. The British and the "Great Game" failed, as did the Soviet Union, as you can read in this prescient 2001 Slatearticle.
No mention was made of Pakistan, and how they've been firing upon our helicopters, and it's as if the Bush administration is just looking for an excuse to get us into some other international imbroglio. Because in the next few weeks, if, say, Pakistan takes down a U.S. gunship, or, if Russia decides to move against Ukraine just as they did Georgia --what will we do about any of these events? Neo-cons and hawks on this side would love it; meaning our old Cold War nemesis had returned in a different guise, and further buttressing the condition of Permanent War.
So then there's the notion of Iran as a rogue state; but, Obama did make the point that if we'd not smashed Iraq to pieces, we wouldn't have a resurgent Iran, flexing its muscles because--he could've added-- from where they sit, they are getting surrounded. This is why diplomacy, as Obama advocates, is important.
Then the whole Billion Dollar Bailout of the Wall Street banks. McCain is all for it and I think Obama, grudging in a way, is also, though with quibbles about parts of the plan --which isn't even agreed upon yet and far from implementation. One of them should've loudly and without equivocation called bullshit on the whole damn thing.
Obama made me sit up from my debate doze when he mentioned missile defense in a favorable way -- the Strategic Defense Initiative is like never-ending war in itself. There's no end to this; a huge money pit working with technology that does not operate. Talk about billions spent for no result! You can start with the science fantasy of missile defense.
SDI has lerched through backstage of U.S. military planning since the Regan administration like some crazy clumsy robot that having started cannot be stopped. Through perverse bureaucratic logic, money keeps getting spent to prove that the previous money wasn't wasted. Missile defense is the height of folly, though not as stupid as giving Wall Street bankers a trillion dollars.
I'll lift from an April post:
"Dr. Evil's Radar Installation Though I've written about this many posts ago, in view of this horrific situation in the world, I thought this 2006 piece from Brad DeLong's blog Grasping Reality With Both Hands is as good as any an indication of the warped-beyond-understanding consensus reality that the U.S. operates under in these critical days:
Nuclear Armageddon-Prevention Blogging
His name is Stross. Charles Stross. And he writes about the X-band radar system:
Charlie's Diary: Paging Dr Evil (or, Who designs these things, anyway?): The Strategic Defense Initiative (aka "Star Wars" program) has, since Ronald Reagan announced it more than 20 years ago, cost the US government more than US $100Bn.... There are about ten interceptor missiles available, and the current goal of the project is to pop a cap in the ass of any rogue state that tries to destroy the United States by launching a single 1950s-vintage ICBM with a single warhead and no countermeasure capability.... However, there is one leetle weakness in the BMD program. To hit a missile with a missile requires fairly accurate radar -- it entails accurately tracking a target the size of a dustbin at a range of several thousand kilometres -- and so they've also developed an appropriate radar system. The sea-based X-band radar system... looks as if it sailed in out of a Bond movie: a $900M fifty thousand tonne offshore platform with a 1800 ton radar installation on top of it, it's designed to sit in the ocean near the Aleutian islands and spot incoming sub-orbital trash cans and guide the rocket interceptors into the target.
Unfortunately, there's a problem with it.... [A]ny budding Doctor Evil can ensure the success of his orbital mind control lasers or terrorist ICBMs by... sending... a 1950s vintage Whisky class diesel-electric submarine to poke a pointy stick through the eyes of the ballistic missile defense system. Which is, you will notice, not exactly mounted on a vessel that's capable of fighting off a bunch of Malacca Straits pirates.... I don't know about you, but I'm coming to the conclusion that the Pentagon subcontracted this job to the same guys that James Bond's enemies always hired to design their headquarters -- you know, the one with the prominently labelled SELF DESTRUCT button. (That would be Halliburton and Brown & Root, right?) I mean, what other explanation is there...?
I am told that the vulnerability of the X-band radar to pretty much anything with explosives, and the absence of two rotating carrier battle groups to protect it would be a serious defect in the system--if it worked, and if it couldn't be spoofed.
But I am also told that it doesn't work. And that it can be spoofed. So the vulnerability of the radar problem is only a third-order flaw in the system as it stands."
