Mohammed's Briar Patch

Calhoun's Cannons for June 16, 2014

We warned long ago that the adventurism the Americans and the British started there would not end well."

                                                  Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov

Would somebody please send Senator John MaCain to Iraq so he can bomb something -- anything.  Right now, his war-lust, like all the old men who send other people's children to war, is running amok.  And who invited all those zombies back on TV?  Kristol, Wolfowitz, Bremer, the Bush-era Unrepentant Undead are flooding the airwaves once again to peer out from the TV screen to proffer more wrong "advice," singing the old PNAC song.  They were wrong then and wrong now.  Dear God, please make them go away. 

Well, it's not like anybody knows what to do, except "something."  But  what?  Even McCain's longed-for desire to bomb somebody, anybody, would likely end up with a supreme irony: American forces fighting on the same side of Iran, an official terrorist state.  That's how cork-screwed the Middle East has become, thanks to our "help."

Watching the predictable news out of Iraq, I can only ask, "Is America finally ready to get schooled in the terrible price we always pay for our willful ignorance, our deliberate know-nothingness, both of which fuel our pathological willingness to fall for the Big Con?"

The Neo-Con Philosopher Kings, their media pundits and their chosen President deluded themselves into thinking that folks living in the oil-rich middle east  under those funny clothes,  were, at heart, conservative-minded Rotarians from small-town Iowa who were just waiting for someone to bring them "freedom" so they could open up a Levis store, make lots of money and send their daughters to study Am. Lit. at a nice liberal arts college, then marry a stock broker.  

And what better excuse to launch this PNAC plan than after 9/11, when America had blood in her eye, no world history in her head, and didn't know a Sunni from a Shi'a, and  Iraq from Yemen?  If you "looked muslim," that was good enough.  You were a terrorist and a threat to "our way of life" and if we shocked and awed the wrong country in our pursuit of al Quaeda, who cared?  We'd be greeted as liberators and the oil money would pay for this grand jingo jaunt, and we'd have a fine time kicking some Muslim ass.

Only it didn't turn out that way, as old Sergey knew, Russia having had it's own "Iraqi" moment in Afghanistan.  As Colin Powell knew with his "you break it you own it" rhetoric.  As history itself would/should have told us, had we bothered to read or even talk to some old coot in British Intelligence, one of the old guys who arbitrarily divided up these countries after WWI, a fateful division of spoils with built-in poison pills that are finally coming due.

And poor Iraq may also be ready to be schooled in the terrible price to be paid when sectarian ideology trumps practical reality.  When dogs fight over a bone, it is the wolf who will settle the hash. And in this case, ISIS, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, appears ready to collect a good deal of the bones. Yet another lost lesson:  Beware the religious or political  fanatic whose "purity" (and weaponry and tactical smarts) is greater than your own. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi dreams of a neo-Caliphate and that dream may prove to be more costly than anyone can imagine.

No, Sergey, this adventure did not turn out well.  It's possible that the Middle East simply isn't ready for any good solutions, except for their own hideous version of The Thirty Years War.  As long as fundamentalism appears to be an attractive bulwark against modernism and western  imperial designs, too many Islamic countries will remain  locked in the 16th century.  Democracy and modernity cannot thrive with a fundamentalist boot on the neck of the body politic. 

Or it's possible that tribal societies simply can't operate as large modern nation-states. That Iraq, hastily cobbled together by the British and French at the end of World War I, was never sustainable.  Right now, ISIS is re-drawing the map, forcefully, murderously creating something of a fait accompli  dual state -- Sunni to the north, Shi'a to the south.

If that division holds, the next lesson the people of the middle east will have to learn is an old one:  Be careful what you wish for, you might get it. And if Mr. Baghdadi turns out to be the Devil who will deliver the deal, it will not turn out well.

Game Unchanged

Calhoun’s Cannons for March 13, 2012

Humans are the only animals who will follow unstable pack leaders

                                                  Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer

            Sarah Palin and John McCain have both said they didn’t intend to watch HBO’s “Game Change,” an account of their run for president and vice president in 2008.  I’m sure they think the made-for-HBO movie would trash them and anyway, who wants to be reminded of  such embarrassments? While the film does hold them to account for their hubris and blind ambition, overall, they are treated with sympathy; players caught in a win-at-all-cost ethos that did not end well.    

            At the time, like most of the nation, I was stunned when Sarah Palin blew out of the north, her clueless optimism and oddly un-political family in tow, and with the first few national speachs, blew McCain’s train off the track and permanently shoved national politics into a lethal mash up: “American Political Idols Dance With The Stars.” 

            Overnight, Palin’s adoring fans overwhelmed the straight talking express, McCain became that-guy-with-Sarah, and Democratic candidate Obama suddenly had his star-power, media-savvy, crowd-stirring, Great Communicator match.  Yes, half the country watched Katy Couric ask Sarah what newspapers she read, saw her draw a blank and said WTF?? 

            But the other half flocked to her rallies, enthralled as she cranked up the dog whistle music.  Suddenly, those too often forgotten or dismissed by the Washington elite were being told that they were the real Americans, their values were the real American values. And they responded with adoration to their self-styled Mama Grizzly. Sarah! Sarah!   Even Tina Fey’s dead-on comic portrayals could get no traction with those crowds to point out the appallingly obvious:  McCain’s an old man, he’s had cancer once, Palin is one heart-beat away from the Presidency.  This woman is not qualified.

            Even Dick Cheney – Dick Cheney! – called the choice “reckless.”

            But Steve Schmidt, McCain’s political strategist “got it” right in the middle of the campaign, if this film is accurate.  The belief that his candidate had to win no matter what drove him and McCain to make that Hail Mary, stunningly reckless gamble on Palin. It was a choice that made a mockery of McCain’s campaign slogan, “ Country First.”  As they would sadly find out, it was always Palin First.

            And that, for me was the most puzzling part of this whole affair.  How self-blind do you have to be to get a phone call out of the blue asking you to run for the second highest office in the land and with nary a qualm say, “You betcha! Sure. I’ll be a great Veep.  Heck, I’d be a great President.  When do we start?” 

            A normal person would say, “Sorry.  I’m not qualified.”  But an egotistical narcissist with no capacity for reality checks would have no problem. Or somebody in the grip of some delusional religious mania: “God told me to run for office.”  Or maybe a cynically ambitious sociopath who knows the American voter can be Elmer Gantried into buying anything.

            Or, perhaps, it was as simple as the L.A. Times television critic, Mary McNamara suggests: “The film, obviously, belong to (Julianne) Moore, who works hard to make Palin not so much fatally ambitious as one of those naturally confident people who believe that confidence and faith are the most important ingredients of success; ability or even competence can be learned on the job.”

            Except when it can’t.

            As the movie makes clear, after trying to educate and fill in Palin’s gaping information void, her handlers finally gave up, realized she was a natural “red-light” actor, and just wrote Cliff Notes scripts for her – talking points, summaries, buzz words and phrases.  Which solved some of the most glaring problems of an extemporaneous Sarah, but sill left her handlers with a serious disconnect: Imagine an unprepared student who just skims the topic and memorizes key points and phrases but who then over reaches and overloads the mashed-up answers into nonsense.  That would go a long way towards explaining Palin’s distinctly odd and incoherent verbal rambles.

            Overall, the film was extraordinarily kind to Palin, showing a plucky woman working hard to do her bit but who was pushed beyond her capabilities and into overwhelm until she finally decides to go rogue and quickly becomes a distraction and then a liability to a campaign heading for the cliff. 

            But the film didn’t bother to do any more than hint at the deeper political problems the McCain/Palin campaign illustrated:  A cynical win-at-all-costs mind set, a philosophically bankrupt political party bereft of any new ideas but determined to cling to power for no other reason than a need to cling to power, and a dangerous conflation of bread and circus entertainment with cynical beltway politics, all tapping into America’s dark dog-whistle, social-values heart. 

            It is the same disease that’s infected the Republican Party’s primary election and the plague will arrive full blown in both political parties come November, all fueled now by unlimited, secret PAC money – Democracy as a fully financed corporate block-buster TV special.   

     Bring on the dancing bears.

Ya Wanna Run That One By Me One More Time?

So, let me see if I have this straight. Let’s say you’re an assistant CEO of a California County and your employment is a [correction] "non-civil service contract job, which means you can be unhired/fired for a variety of good reasons" And it turns out you were canoodling a gentleman with which your duties required you to negotiate over contracts, and otherwise engaging in inappropriate email banter with your immediate supervisor.

So your ultimate bosses, let’s say a Board of Supervisors, found out about this, spent over $300,000 of the taxpayer’s money to investigate you and your canoodling and then unhired your sorry [non civil service] behind.

So you sue the county for a bundle, claiming that you were sexually harassed by the Supervisor whom with you were exchanging inappropriate email. And the county – facing over a million in legal fees needed to defend themselves from you – decide to cut their losses and offer to settle for $180,000.

So you sign the settlement and walk away with $180,000.

Ah, well, nice work if you can get it.

Ask! Hup One, Two; Tell! Hup, One, Two

The Commander in Chief, President Obama, wants the “don’t ask, don’t tell” military policy rescinded this year. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified that he felt that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military is the right thing to do. General Powell, who derailed allowing gays to serve in 1993, has had a change of heart and now wants the ban “reviewed.” Defense Secretary Gates wants to issue orders that will relax the law’s enforcement until a year-long “review” can take place, but to date no stop-loss order has been issued regarding gay service personnel, a simple military order that would put dismissing gays on account of their gayness alone on hold.

Meanwhile, Joint Chief Mullen said the Pentagon will decide how to change the way the military is enforcing the law now and will begin a year-long “study” of how dumping the ban would work, including changes to be made in military benefits and other “equal treatment under military codes” would work.

John McCain, who had previously (when trolling for votes) said that if the top military brass told him lifting the ban was O.K. he’d be fine with that, has suddenly had a change of mind and after hearing from the top military brass saying they’re fine with lifting the ban, he now opposes it (trolling for future votes, fingers to the wind again, eh John?). And some of the loopier homophobe Congressmen went on record to speculate then hyperventilate about totally weird made-up “gay” scenarios pulled out of their psyches, which is always so creepily revealing. But scary, knowing those sexually kinky, fetid, roiling imaginariums are the same ones crafting laws that can do serious injury to the citizenry.

The whole thing brought about a very funny bit on The Daily Show wherein it was proposed that McCain wasn’t being a hypocrite but that he had forgotten what he’d previously said on account of his being old, so what we really need to keep our country safe is to ban OLD people from serving in Congress. After all, if they’re forgetting things, that’s a dangerous situation in a place that writes complex laws. Totally disrupts legislative preparedness and congressional cohesion. Worse, it becomes an awful burden on all the rest of Congress, having to deal daily with these OLD people all the time, often in close quarters, creeping up behind people, fiddling with their hearing aids in public, really icky stuff like that. We really shouldn’t have to subject our elected officials to such rampant OLDNESS. Awful!

Well, this is all déjà vu-ness. All the same tired old arguments were heard when it was proposed that Africa Americans be integrated into the general military population. Ditto when women wanted to sign up. Now, it’s the gays turn in the barrel. Nobody learns anything.

What remains so sad about all this is how willing, easy and quickly We The People are to enact laws that deny or remove basic rights and block or deny equal protections and deny equality under law from our fellow citizens.

And how hard and fiercely we battle -- spending years and years “reviewing” and “studying” and foot dragging -- when it finally becomes more than obvious that such laws need to be struck down or repealed.

Speaks volumes to our self-righteously, publicly professed commitment to “equal justice under law.”