You're right McCitizen. The Republicans have been selling us this crap for years, and we keep buying it. They've got people believing that the gummint just takes our money and puts it through a shredder. Meanwhile they keep cutting taxes to "stimulate" the economy and put that debt on the national credit card. The Republican Party owns $7 trillion of our $9 trillion national debt.

Government spending is not a drag on the US economy; it's a vital part of the economy. Just ask Halliburton and KBR.

At least when the Democrats spend our money, it's more likely to be spent here. The Republicans have taken us into foreign adventures that sends a lot of that money out of the country. Contractors in Iraq - whether US-based, foreign-based or multinational - hire cheap foreign labor so some of that money goes to Pakistan, the Philippines and other far-flung lands with desperate labor forces. Kuwaiti and other middlemen are making out nicely, too.

Empires are expensive to run and need to pay off to the Motherland. The British Empire was a success for many years because of its mercenary bent.

Our empire succeeded as long as it focused on Latin America and the other former Spanish lands we took in 1898. When we overshot and went for southeast Asia, and now the Middle East, on mostly ideological grounds rather than for commercial reasons, we failed. No payoff to the Motherland, no reason to die for the Motherland.

And that, brothers and sisters, is why you should read Mark Twain. Not the Mississippi writings (those too, though), but his anti-imperialist works.

Posted at April 15, 2008 9:33 PM in response to McCain To Pitch Tax Cuts, Hit Obama's "Audacity" Of Tax Increases

War is too important to be left to the ignorant. Ignorant political leaders, ignorant military leaders and ignorant reporters can combine on occasion to create a perfect disaster where good soldiers and Marines are sent to fight and die on the flimsiest of excuses and for the poorest of reasons.

Due in part to the failure of the papers to take Gen. Sullivan up on his offer, there is one other ignorant class. Ignorant citizens. These are the people who gave George Bush a 70%+ approval rating during the buildup to the Iraqi invasion, but who now give him, on a good day, 29%.

These are the people who wanted to see dead "ragheads" after 9/11. It didn't matter who paid the cost, as long as it was someone brown and different. As Balbir Singh Sodhi discovered. These are the people who forced Hillary Clinton and many other finger-in-the-wind Democrats to approve the Authorization for Use of Military Force which GWB rode into Iraq.

God knows we didn't learn the lessons of Vietnam, lessons so ably analyzed by people such as Andrew Bacevich - a man who has now lost a son to this godforsaken misadventure.

We should not worship the men and women we send off to fight our battles as heroes. They are not heroes. They are people who took a job, for reasons either noble or mercenary. For many, it is both noble AND mercenary. But without them, we would be defenseless. Andrew Olmsted was a soldier who understood his job as a soldier very well. And he understood his job as a citizen even better.

It is our job as citizens - a much more important job - to send them into harm's way only when necessary, only with the defense of our nation as a goal.

We threw off a king 232 years ago, and now we find ourselves individually and collectively in the position of Henry V on the night before Agincourt, as William Shakespeare fictionalized that event. It may be fiction, but read it, to better understand your job as a citizen.

For over 100 years now we have thrown our defenders into imperialistic enterprises. The Iraq conquest is only the latest example. Please, dear God, let us learn the lesson this time.

Posted at March 23, 2008 2:37 AM in response to A Failure of Intelligence

Did you listen to the tape, frankly0? Casey Knowles is a precinct captain for Obama in Washington. Your candidate stepped in something. Ms. Knowles pointed it out. Such is life.

Now can we all either enjoy or deplore this brief moment in private, and move along to relevant matters?

Posted at March 23, 2008 12:59 AM in response to Girl In Red Phone Ad Denounces Hillary And Her "Politics Of Fear"

Deoll, yep, you caught me on presidential elections. I caught myself, but only after it was too late. Pulled it out of my ass then realized my mistake. Hopefully, I'm right that it will change, but I can live with the current system. Beats what the Pakistanis are working with.

When all you've got is an army, then the solution to every problem is a bloodbath.

True enough, Valdron. When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Since the Spanish-American War, the US military has mostly been used for economic conquest. Smedley Butler had that figured out long ago.

Did you know that the US military has more marching band musicians than the State Department has diplomats?

Nope, but I'm not surprised. And GWB's administration will cut State's budget again this year.

Leave Pakistan to the Pakistani's. It's their country.

Amen, my friend.

Posted at February 19, 2008 10:15 PM in response to Democracy in Pakistan, Despite Bush Policies

Absent from Hartung's little rumination is any curiousity as to what happens now with Pakistan. Is Mushareff really out, or will he continue being a dictator... or become even more dictatorial?

In terms of the new elections, who is in, who is out, and what do they want?

I don't now, but I know that it's in our best interests to work with whoever won the elections, not the wildly unpopular Musharraf. Otherwise we repeat those "jams" mentioned by cal1942 - Iran, Chile, half of central America, Vietnam, etc, all the way back to the Philippines. The mistakes we are repeating in Afghanistan and Iraq - the idea that there is a military solution to these problems. The idea that if we just kill enough people, we win.

Posted at February 19, 2008 2:36 PM in response to Democracy in Pakistan, Despite Bush Policies

raincntry, you are correct that the US was established as a republic, but the House and the presidency were left to a decision of the people. Democracy, in a word. In time, we changed the Constitution to allow direct election of senators as well. The trend is towards more democracy, not less, and if not for the wording of the Constitution, that might not have been possible.

The election of 2000 was not the first where the leading vote-getter did not win the office of the presidency (though it was the first where the Supreme Court determined the winner). There is widespread dissatisfaction with the electoral college, and that may be the next wall to fall before democracy. Especially if we have another close election in the next decade or so.

I hope I never read the phrase "quasi-democratic" again. "Representative democracy" I can live with, but not "quasi-democracy". The people are the ultimate arbiters over their leaders, be he Saddam Hussein or Gordon Brown. Or Pervez Musharraf. Democracy is the tool we have to keep from changing leaders through things like foreign invasion or Nights of the Long Knives. We vote or we fight.

Which tool would you rather use?

Posted at February 19, 2008 1:55 PM in response to Democracy in Pakistan, Despite Bush Policies