The Obama administration's preliminary agreement with Russia to reduce each nation's nuclear arsenal is a small step towards carrying out the president's pledge to seek a "world free of nuclear weapons." The question is, why was it so small?
If the neocons are to be believed, Ahmadinejad's theft of the Iranian elections - and his continuing crackdown on dissent - are not the results of internal dynamics in Iran, but rather of the words of conciliation spoken by President Obama prior to the vote.
As the latest incarnation of Mitt Romney - the fire breathing hawk - put the right-wing case on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, "It is very clear that the president's policies of going around the world and apologizing for America aren't working."
An excellent post by Ali Frick that ran on Think Progress earlier this week quotes Iraq-war advocates Richard Perle and Frank Gaffney asserting that Obama's willingness to talk to Iran about curbing its nuclear program has helped legitimize Ahmadinejad's regime and emboldened the "thugs" in Tehran due to "our weakness." And Robert Kagan has put in his two cents worth in today's Washington Post in an article entitled "Obama, Siding With the Regime."
What would the neocons do differently? What should be done in the face of Ahmadinejad's repression, and how will it influence efforts to stop Tehran from seeking a nuclear weapon?
All right, maybe "fun" is an exaggeration. But the first report of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan -- created as a result of legislation sponsored by Senators James Webb (D-VA) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) -- contains far more than just the usual bureaucratic verbiage that too often characterizes documents of this sort. It includes information that is critical to determining whether it is possible to curb contractor fraud and abuse in theaters of conflict.
President Obama's pledge to seek a world without nuclear weapons - reiterated in a speech last month in Prague - represents one of the most critical elements of his national security agenda. Nuclear weapons serve no military purpose, and the use of even one of these instruments of mass terror would cause unparalleled destruction. But that hasn't stopped a chorus of neo-conservative critics - the same folks who pushed for war with Iraq based on false claims regarding its alleged weapons of mass destruction -- from dismissing Obama's anti-nuclear agenda as "naïve," and "unrealistic."
Budget analysts across the political spectrum expected Lockheed Martin to put on a full-court press in Congress to reverse the recent decision by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to cancel its lucrative, $350-million-per-plane F-22 combat aircraft. But now the company's chief financial officer says the company will accept the Pentagon's decision and "move on." Has the military-industrial complex lost its nerve, or is there something else going on here?
As Matt Cooper pointed out earlier this week at TPMDC, Lockheed Martin and its allies pushing the Obama administration to buy more F-22 aircraft in part because it is allegedly a "shovel-ready" project that can create (or at least preserve) jobs now. The company's own documents, and an interview with a key union official at its Georgia facility -- a main production site for the aircraft -- tell a different story.
Despite the fact that military spending is at its highest level since World War II, the arms industry and its allies in the think tank world and the punditocracy are seeking to cash in on the push for a substantial economic stimulus. The Washington Post has hosted two pieces making variations on this argument, one by its monthly contributor Robert Kagan, and one by Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute. We're going to be hearing the "defense as stimulus" argument long after the current stimulus package has been enacted, as part of the debate over the size and shape of the FY2010 Pentagon budget. So, it's worth debunking some of the myths inherent in this argument.
Any time Congress spends hundreds of billions of dollars in a hurry we'd better read the fine print. So it is with today's Senate Appropriations Committee mark-up of the next installment -- over $365 billion -- of the economic stimulus package. Tucked away in the bill is $7.8 billionfor the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration -- the agency responsible for researching, developing and maintaining nuclear weapons. The funding is set aside for a variety of purposes, from construction of facilities to clean-up of weapons sites to "laboratory infrastructure," to "advanced computing development." Whatever the appropriations committee chooses to call it, it represents a bailout for an agency that should be reduced in size, not increased.
My first impression of President (yes, President!) Obama's first speech is that it was more sober, less inspirational than it could have been. But my favorite parts were about how we shouldn't debate over big government or small government, but government that works; and that the market has to be put under a "watchful eye," and that "a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous."
As is perhaps appropriate, the press, the pundits, and our political leaders often turn at this time of year to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream Speech" as the touchstone of discussions of his life and work. So it has been with President-elect Barack Obama, who presided over a concert and celebration of freedom at the Lincoln Memorial last night -- the site of the "I Have a Dream Speech," given at the 1963 March on Washington.
One passage from that speech rings particularly true today: "We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy." The extent to which we move with urgency to make those promises real will be a measure of the Obama presidency, and of our ability as a nation to seize this historic moment.
By and large, it is a good thing that John Bolton is no longer in government, where he worked overtime to undermine any number of worthwhile agreements, such as the effort to cap and roll back North Korea's nuclear program. But his fall from power has come at a price. He is now the mainstream media's neocon of choice, widely quoted in news articles and placed prominently on op-ed pages as if he were just another pundit, not the co-author of some of the most disastrous policies in our nation's history. The last straw may have come today, when Bolton simultaneously had articles on the op-ed pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times (an impressive "daily double").
Tough assignment. My first draft was a blank screen. But in a sick, twisted way, there are some things I will miss about George W. Bush.
1) The word "nucular": Can't beat a guy with his finger on the nuclear button who can't pronounce the word "nuclear."
2) Donald Rumsfeld: Was he a jerk? Yes. Was he a genius at asking and answering his own questions? Sure. Was this habit occasionally amusing? Almost. Am I glad he's gone? You betcha.
3) Dick Cheney?
If the reports that Robert Gates will be kept on as Defense Secretary for the first year of the Obama administration are true, it raises all kinds of questions -- on nuclear weapons policy, on Iraq, on military spending, on the balance between military and civilian tools of foreign assistance, and on policy towards Iran.
Gates is no Donald Rumsfeld, but nor is he an inspired choice. If Obama felt the need to appoint a Republican to his national security team, I would have much preferred Chuck Hagel at the State Department, with someone like Sam Nunn at Defense (assuming either or both of them would have been open to serving in these positions). But, we are where we are. What might the Gates appointment mean for the evolution of U.S. defense policy during Obama's crucial first year?
One of the more interesting moments of last night's 60 Minutes broadcast of their interview with Barack Obama was the point where he indicated that he was open to ideas from anyone, whether it be FDR or Ronald Reagan, as long as the ideas workto solve a current problem.
My first thought was that this was a calculated political move, designed to appeal to conservatives who are still skeptical about an Obama presidency. But on at least one issue -- the need to eliminate nuclear weapons -- Reagan's legacy fits perfectly with Obama's current position.
The news the other day that American Express is reorganizing itself as a bank holding company so it can access federal bailout funds was the last straw.
"What about us?", my wife and I complained. Why should we hold our breath and hope that some of the hundreds of billions allocated for the big institutions that helped get us into this mess in the first place will somehow trickle down to us?
So, we've decided to reorganize ourselves as a bank holding company, the better to access federal bailout funds.
