Behaving Badly

There's a lot of cultural nonsense about how enlightened Europeans are versus the boorish behavior of Americans. Then things like this happen and we're reminded that anyone from any nation or any culture can behave like a total dick.



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Religion of Peace

Where does cultural justification of violence meet historical revisionism? Well, this week those forces met in Norway, and the noise machine kicked into gear.

There are two views of the world. In one view, one accepts that human beings are capable of horrible things as well as wonderful things, while using their individual beliefs to justify extreme behavior on either side and all those in between. In the other view, human beings are capable of horrible things as well as wonderful things, but what marks the difference depends on how much they agree with your own beliefs.

Take the latter too far, and Andrew Sullivan explains what you get:

Both Islamism and Christianism, to my mind, do not spring from real religious faith; they spring from neurosis caused by lack of faith. They are the choices of those who are panicked by the complexity and choices of modernity into a fanatical embrace of a simplistic parody of religion in order to attack what they see as their cultural and social enemies. They are not about genuine faith; they are about the instrumentality of faith as a political bludgeon.

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Other Economies

Not only have American taxpayers been subsidizing their own upper classes for a while now, but, as Jay Bookman at the AJC reminds us, we've been subsidizing a lot of other nations' whole economies, too.

Specifically, America spends a lot of money on defense so Europe doesn't have to.

And, yes, we'll loan friendly foreign powers money and encourage them to buy our old weapons and technology. Yes, this creates a few jobs here and there (and a lot of very wealthy defense contractors). But has anyone really done an intellectually robust, cost-benefit analysis of this relationship?

I think about this when I hear folks talk about how awesome social programs and transit and infrastructure are in Europe. I think about it when I hear folks telling me how competitive those economies are compared to our own. It all comes down to priorities, they explain.

But how would those priorities have changed if those nations didn't have the American people subsidizing their national security?

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Perspective

Please serve yourself a helping.

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The Libyan Gamble

Libya. WTF? In a nation as polarized as we are, things aren't supposed to be this complicated. You're either Pro-War or you're in with Big Peace. You're either a neocon or a realist. You're either Pro-UN Internationalism or Pro-US Unilateralism. What do you do when your deliberative President reaches a similar conclusion to that of a "decider?" We're supposed to know exactly what to think, which party officials will do what, and which voting blocs will behave in what ways.

Karl Rove isn't supposed to "God Bless" Hillary Clinton.

Adrastos says it well:

[G]ood intentions are NOT sufficient. After watching the Bushies give Wilsonian internationalism a right wing twist, I'm a born again realist in matters of war and peace.

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I *really* hope I'm wrong about this because I'd love to see that murderous brown clad shitbird Gaddafi toppled. But the way they've gone about this gives me the heebie jeebies.

I think this is the biggest gamble America's made in decades. Ousting Gaddafi quickly with the combined might of Allied air-power and United Nations mandate restores badly needed credibility to internationalism. America no longer world policeman? I'm down with that. A big plus would be the preservation of the Arab pro-reform movement sweeping the Middle East. If newly liberated Libyans are cheering in the streets and setting up a post-Gaddafi government, Bahrain and Yemen are more likely to cut some deals at the conference table. And that's all secondary to the elimination of one of the world's last true madmen.

But if Gaddafi wins? Everything falls apart. Internationalism and the United Nations will be worthless. The United States will have sealed the deal in establishing a new era of Great Powers (that is coming quickly anyway but why hurry it along?). Gaddafi will butcher people on state television and no one will be able to do a thing about it. The Arab Reforms stop in their tracks, as dissent is crushed by autocrats who never have to listen to anyone but themselves again, ever.

That's just what happens immediately, and I'm not seeing a middle ground.

How did we get here? Let us count the ways:

Somalia was such a disaster for internationalism that little was done about Rwanda & Burundi, the Sudan, and - of course - Somalia.

The Balkans were the messy win of internationalism at work: proving that thousands dead, genocide, and war crimes in the neighborhood will eventually push the Europeans to clean house and bring America along for the ride.

Afganistan was the base of operations for those who attacked us on September 11th, the USS Cole, and in Kenya and Tanzania; it was an ongoing human-rights disaster; and it was a mess we had no small part in creating. I don't argue about our nation going to war in Afganistan, though I wonder what strategies could have been used to end that war sooner.

Iraq. We've really been in a state of undeclared war with Iraq since 1991, when the triumphant coalition of international allies drove Hussein's armies out of Kuwait. But we never really left. This is the longest-running external armed conflict in US history, and we are now on President #4 trying to end this cycle. The American people are still arguing about the restart of this war in 2003, basically so we have something other than Vietnam to argue about. And we're arguing about it despite the fact that the troops have held together two invasions this most recent invasion and an occupation without a clear strategy from Washington; without the appropriate resources needed to take, hold, and rebuild a nation of millions; and without true international support. That is an amazing accomplishment that is usually ignored when talking about this war.

Because the talking is mostly arguing about why we went to war in the first place. And that argument, based on our intervention in Libya, apparently hasn't been settled or even acknowledged. Which is one of the ways we've gotten to where we are today.

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"Sane People Will Stop Paying Attention"

We can only hope they will. I'm glad I'm not the only individual who noticed that Glenn Beck and the rest of the right-wingers have upped the ante on shark jumping with the Egyptian Revolution (And Why Obama Is To Blame).

I'm literally floored that these people, who spent months to instigate and cash in on the idea of an American Tea Party "Revolution" against a freely and legally elected American government - that peacefully transferred power after the following election - are lining up to denounce pro-democratic, reform-minded Egyptians who are actually facing the batons, water cannons, tear gas, and blades of a tyrant.

Though I've heard Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage and O'Reilly - not to mention the blogosphere - tirelessly one-upping one another in hyperbolic warnings of what will come, and why President Obama is to blame for whatever happens, Glenn Beck - "a college sophmore with a big budget" - wins this one going away.

To cut to the chase, a new caliphate will emerge in the Middle East and push further east until China, as Beck puts it, says "Knock it off guys" and takes over India, reaching some way into Pakistan. The caliphate will then push north, which is when it will absorb the UK
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So there you have it, an "Archduke Ferdinand moment" which will split Europe, the Middle East and Asia into Chinese and radical Islamic zones. In the full Beck, he also introduces Bill Ayers (who Sarah Palin had in mind when she accused Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists"), Hizbullah and Code Pink, a feminist antiwar group. But that's enough for now.

And keep in mind, this is a show that holds a primetime slot on a major "news" network.

(Link HT's to DSB.)

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The "Center's" Fault

Usually, I expect to see attacks on "centrism" and "moderation" from the left. They don't like the fact that we can't move society to their utopian vision all at once, and they blame us for keeping it from happening.

The right is usually more subtle (counterintuitively enough), moving the goalposts so that "centrism" and "moderation" have now come to mean "baby-killing, terrorist-sympathising, homosexual-agenda style sharia Kenyan anti-colonialism" or whatever, or by taking a consensus idea like "small businesses are important" or "apple pie is delicious" and saying the left is out to destroy that whatever it is because they hate everything good about America.

But I've rarely seen dedicated attacks on centrism from those aspiring to represent reasonable conservatism. Deconstructing Christopher Hitchens' blistering excoriation of Tea Party ideology, Ross Douhat says:

[D]o you know what else has often led to folly, disaster, violence and human misery? The “moderation” and “centrism” of the Western governing class.

He then lists these items as examples of "moderation and centrism in the Western governing class:"

1. The war in Afganistan.
2. The war in Iraq.
3. Medicare Part D.
4. Health Care Reform.
5. The Euro.
6. The Real Estate bubble.
7. The Bailouts.
8. The TSA & Current American Security State.
9. The Obama Tax Deal.

So, basically, everything currently viewed by a significant group of Americans as unpopular is not a product of American political extremes. I would consider this historical revisionism if it wasn't so baldly laughable.

Let's run down the list, shall we?

1. Al Queda operatives attacked us, and we went after them in Afganistan. As we should have done. The initial strategy, employed for nearly six years of war, was constructed by Donald Rumsfeld, an unabashed and now discredited neoconservative who hardly qualifies as anything approaching centrism or moderation.

2. The Iraq War. A dubious foray into faulty intelligence, preemptive war, misadventure and nation building, this was also the brain-child of neoconservatives like Donald Rumsfeld and VP Dick Cheney. Sold alternately as a vengeance response to the September 11th attacks, an search for WMD's, a strike against an imminent threat or just a chance to spread "freedom" around the globe, Democrats in Washington stupidly voted for this war because they were scared what the GOP would say about them in the media if they didn't.

3. Medicare Part D. An insufficient correction to badly administered programs, this is what happens when you attempt to address a problem without actually fixing said problem because doing so would leave you politically vulnerable to elements on the extremes demagouging the issue. Contrary to popular belief, centrism and moderation are not about punting on the hard choices, though they are often confused for that.

4. Health Care Reform. An insufficient correction to suicidally administered systems, this is what happens when you attempt to actually fix a problem with a centrist or moderate solution and then leave yourself politically vulnerable to elements on the extremes to proceed to demagouge the issue. While you expected more political support (that's why you were using a centrist framework, after all) the virulence of the opposition encouraged you to make significant changes to the already insufficient correction that keep it from actually fixing the problem.

5. The Euro is a very centrist idea. Europe wanted to simplify their economic relationships. The economy changed for the worse (because of economic extremists) and that simplification became a liability.

6. The Real Estate Bubble is what happens when economic extremists looking to maufacture Monopoly money legally inadvertently change the economy for the worse.

7. The Bailouts were required from keeping the American, and world, economy from collapsing due to the trillions of dollars in Monopoly money created by item 6. Another insufficient correction to a problem we shouldn't have had in the first place, the bailouts were a highly unpopular decision that had to be made. While saying "no" would have been chathartic, the risk of worldwide economic collapse was too great. I have no problem with this being labeled "centrist" or "moderate," but I have a problem with it being demagouged on the extremes, especially from the right, who had too big a hand in causing the problem the bailouts were intended to correct.

8. The TSA & Current American Security State. Really? This is only howlingly considered a centrist or moderate creation. For 8 years, this apparatus expanded under a right-wing Republican President, cheerled by right-wing punditry, and supported by media scaring the shit out of an already fearful America. For 8 years, we heard only that opposition to the expansion of this apparatus was akin to liberal support of terrorism and hatred for America.

9. The Obama Tax Deal is more bipartisan than centrist or moderate, but it comes close. While an acceptance of political realities put into place over the last 2 years (its main claim to centrism), it represents a "punt" on the difficult decisions that have to be made (bipartisan).

In total, however, that's 5 - 4 in favor of extremists owning these policies, with extremists directly scuttling the former centrist policies (the Euro, Health Care) and extremists directly creating the need for the latter centrist policy (the Bailouts and Obama Tax Deal). Extremists, on both sides and encouraged by their specific media, are causing too many of our problems.

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