Our slow decline is a product of two inter-related problems. First, we’ve let our five basic pillars of growth erode since the end of the cold war — education, infrastructure, immigration of high-I.Q. innovators and entrepreneurs, rules to incentivize risk-taking and start-ups, and government-funded research to spur science and technology.

Not bad, Tom, not bad. We have heard you beat this drum before, but it’s a beat we can all dance to. From here you should elaborate on steps we should take to remedy these areas of neglect, argue why they are important, and suggest even a specific policy or two. It’s a lot for a single column, so maybe a series of columns on this topic. It’s huge, Tom. I hope you did your research.

What follows instead is bloviating on squandered opportunities following the end of the Cold War, and much hand-wringing over the public debt, with requisite wordy quotations from a Harvard economics prof Tom talked to. To be fair, it’s not all poppycock: “Until we find ways to restructure and forgive some of these debts from consumers, firms, banks and governments, spending to drive growth is not going to come back at the scale we need,” Tom concludes. This begs a lot of questions, the biggie being, Who will do the debt forgiveness? Almost a third of U.S. debt is owned by China, Japan, the U.K., and Brazil (thanks, Wikipedia!), and I doubt any of them are in a forgiving mood while our government keeps playing chicken with the global economy.

Yet what’s really strange is just as he pooh-poohs spending, Friedman throws together a few repetitive paragraphs collecting his vague policy prescriptions, among them being “to invest in the pillars of our growth, with special emphasis on infrastructure, research and incentives for risk-taking and start-ups.” Er, that requires spending, Tom. I’m glad you’re on board with the raising of revenues, it shows you’re not insane; the money we spend has to come from somewhere. But not all the growth is going to come overnight; it’s going to require contributions from more than just the high-IQ crowd; and the consumers caught in their own liquidity trap require the very social services and job programs and education programs that are on the chopping block of deficit hawks whose rhetorical traffic you play in.

Meanwhile, Tom completely fails to mention the enormous costs of our two failed wars — three, if Libya counts as a war that we are failing — and the bloated Department of War Defense budget. He doesn’t have to flog himself for supporting those ventures in the past, it’s just that we can’t have a coherent discussion of our fiscal problems without acknowledging thirty years of military spending at hundreds of billions annually or the trillions spent on wars that are still ongoing. Sadly, in this Tom is not alone. He’s got company in the White House.

Spread the joy...

“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I’ve read some obituaries with great pleasure.”
-–Mark Twain

“I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.”
–Ezekiel 33:10

“For all the people out there scolding each other for various emotional reactions, I have this to say: Stop it. There is no “right” way to feel. Americans were victimized by a horrible mass murder. A measure of justice has been dealt. People react how they react. Some people react with joy. Some with grief. Some with jokes. Some do all of the above. All feelings are just that, feelings. Stop trying to control it.”
–Amanda Marcotte

I have felt each of these throughout the twenty-four hours following the announcement U.S. forces finally found and killed Osama bin Laden. And that’s not counting the initial disbelief and laughter I expressed when my friend Patrick told me on the phone last night. Or the disturbingly quick partisan assessment I made that Obama is assured re-election (which upon further thought is not assured at all: witness Bush the Elder’s loss of Gulf War brownie points when he failed to take the recession of the early 90s seriously.) Today when Twitter turned into a debate about the sincerity of Rush Limbaugh’s remarks praising Obama’s role in taking bin Laden down, I decided I should just back away and throw up my hands.

I am glad bin Laden is no longer at large. I hope his demise does not make him a martyr, but seriously demoralizes his organization and all of the violent sociopaths he inspired. But don’t tell me justice was served. Too much blood has been spilled in the name of my country, with my tax dollars, at the sacrifice of my countryfolk and the uncounted deaths of thousands of innocent people around the world.

Edited to add the link to Megan Mcardle’s post on dubious MLK quote. Which just makes this that much weirder.

Spread the joy...

Libyans who went to investigate the US warplane’s crash site said that a US helicopter had come in with guns firing, creating panic and wounding onlookers, some of whom had to be taken to hospital; one 20-year-old man is expected to have his leg amputated.

The villagers said they had been searching for the plane’s missing airmen to welcome them and help them.

A member of the Libyan rebel forces at the site of the crash, Omar Sayid, a colonel of the military police, told Channel Four News: “We are disturbed about the shooting, because if they’d given us a chance we would have handed over both pilots. This shooting created panic.”

The article also reports that the airmen had been accidentally ejected from their fighter jet, not shot down. “One hid in a sheep pen before being found by rebel forces, hugged, given juice and food, and taken to Benghazi.” Emphasis mine — because if you are Nicholas Kristof, that’s the part of the story that really matters.

Doubts are reverberating across America about the military intervention in Libya. Those questions are legitimate, and the uncertainties are huge. But let’s not forget that a humanitarian catastrophe has been averted for now and that this intervention looks much less like the 2003 invasion of Iraq than the successful 1991 gulf war to rescue Kuwait from Iraqi military occupation.

Yeah, cuz there were no civilian casualties in huge numbers from that military venture, nor from its decade-long aftermath. Hey, he made the comparison; I’m just filling it out.

That the citizens of Benghazi held a thank you rally in honor of intervention forces is a positive thing that I hope to see much more of. But we can’t cherry-pick the positive developments from the negative, or vice-versa; such things exist in tandem in war at the best of times, as The Guardian story illustrates. And for fuck’s sake, stop white-washing the past!

Spread the joy...

Far from being a knee-jerk response to Western military action, opposition to the bombing marks a considered reflection on the West’s knee-jerk impulse to mistake war for foreign policy. This impulse follows a well-worn circular logic in three parts: (1) Something must be done now. (2) This is something. (3) So we must do it. And that something invariably involves bombing.

Such sophistry treats “now” as its own abstract point in time: a moment that bears no legacy and carries no consequences. Amnesia and ignorance are the privileges of the powerful. But the powerless, who live with the ramifications, do not have the luxury of forgetting. They do not forget Shatila, Falluja, Abu Ghraib or Jenin—to name but a few horrific war crimes in which the West was complicit.

This time around, however, there is no need for historical references, because the hypocrisy is playing out in real time. When protests started in Tunisia in January, the French foreign minister offered the Tunisian police training to “restore calm.” The day before Libya was attacked, dozens of protesters were shot dead in Yemen. Less than a week before, Saudi forces invaded Bahrain, where many protesters have been killed. These are American allies.

So while the West clearly has the power to intervene, given its history of colonialism and imperialism, it has no more credibility to do so on humanitarian grounds in this region than Iran would to bomb Bahrain in defense of the Shiites who are currently being killed there.

Invoking history, tut tut. We operate according to impulse buy rules in America, buddy. We see the candy, we buy it! And the celebrity tabloids, too! We’re warlocks infused with tiger blood singing about Friday in an always updating mashup of passionate tweets and cardboard principles. There was no yesterday. It is always tomorrow. For now.

Spread the joy...

I didn’t like the “shut up and leave it to us” mode of foreign policy when carried out by people I generally disagreed with, in the Bush-Cheney era. I don’t like it when it’s carried out by people I generally agree with, in this Administration.

Imagine how you might feel when you don’t agree with any of those people.

Anyway, Fallows piece is a must-read.

Spread the joy...

The France-led (sic) international coalition military intervention “Odyssey Dawn” operation against Gadaffi forces in Libya is necessarily controversial. Liberal Democrats are upset that Obama has side-stepped his constitutional responsibility to consult Congress in matters of war waging (Kucinich is already talking impeachment, yawn). FOXNews pundidiots seek rhetorical payback for past liberal mockery of Bush brush-clearing. Personally, I have been wondering if Western powers are seeking a foothold in North Africa to influence the democratic movements in the region. But Marc Armbinder’s piece in the National Journal raises a possibility I hadn’t considered — namely, the Libya intervention as dress-rehearsal for possible future military action against Iran. Here’s the money-quote everyone seems to be blockquoting:

Though the Libyan situation is quite unique – its military is nowhere near as strong as Iran’s is, for one thing – Obama hopes that a short, surgical, non-US-led campaign with no ground troops will satisfy Americans skeptical about military intervention and will not arouse the suspicions of Arabs and Muslims that the U.S. is attempting to influence indigenously growing democracies.

Intriguing. So if the Iranian government continues to repress the Iranian people’s democracy movement and commits an iconic atrocity, will that be provocation enough to justify military intervention? The Pentagon has been planning an invasion of Iran to take out its nuclear facilities for years now; and remember there was considerable concern the BushAdmin would take action a few years ago. But public opinion was solidly against it, what with two wars already bringing us down. It looks like the ObamAdmin is seeking a way around that.

We’ll see. I’m not saying that it WILL happen. But I’m concerned about where these things lead us, and what motivates my government’s military campaigns beyond the official rhetoric. I have no reason to trust the bastards. Not at all.

Spread the joy...

But Yemen? How should we gauge the official reaction to street protests against the U.S.-backed regime there? Tepid. At WaPo, Greg Sargent summarizes why:

The administration has relied on Saleh as a key partner in their counterterrorism efforts. The Washington Post’s Dana Priest has reported that American forces have assisted the Yemeni government in counterterrorism operations against AQAP. Saleh has given the U.S. cover for its use of targeted drone strikes against AQAP by taking credit for them. Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen says that nevertheless, the drone strikes have provoked popular sympathies for extremists.

Johnsen has also argued that the administration’s focus on seeing Yemen “only through the prism of counterterrorism” has produced the kind of instability they were trying to avoid. Yemen’s population is also poorer, and there’s far more potential for extremist groups to take advantage of a potential power vacuum.

For the poor, of course, there has always been a vacuum, at least in terms of services, stability, and standard of living. Dropping bombs on them because their neighborhoods have been infiltrated by select enemies of Western powers may not be the best long-term strategy for promoting peace and stability in the region — not to mention the people’s democratic aspirations.

Spread the joy...

This week Thailand extradited Victor Bout, the so-called “Merchant of Death” to the United States to face charges of global arms trafficking with clients that include the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Undercover DEA agents posed as FARC rebels seeking weapons to shoot down American pilots enforcing the U.S. Plan Colombia policy initiated by the ClintonAdmin oh so long ago and expanded under the BushAdmin.

I just thought that was an interesting juxtaposition.

Also, last month the ObamAdmin announced a plan to sell Saudia Arabia $60 billion worth of arms over the next 20 years. The Experts interpret this deal as a “message to Iran.”

The other day I drove behind a hatchback sporting a bumper sticker with the “O” of Obama rendered as a peace symbol. I had to laugh.

Spread the joy...

Ongoing back and computer problems pretty much keep posts to this blog limited to a weekly basis. So let me take this opportunity to unload random shit that’s been bugging me. Isn’t that what blogs are for?

The NY Times recently reported what any reasonably informed person could have guessed: The Karzai government in Afghanistan has been receiving bags of cash from Iran. Well, duh. Western powers do that, too, so why wouldn’t Afghanistan’s next door neighbor? But there has been the inevitable double standard coming from the usual policy experts (former Clinton and Bush admin wonks), one that deserves its own TV Trope: It’s Different When We Do It. Honestly, I don’t know how. Does Iran have a long history of fucking up Afghanistan’s politics, society and culture? Whose racking up the civilian casualties over there anyway? If you were Iran, wouldn’t you want to pay a little insurance money to keep your neighbor from being a total Western pawn and turning on you?

Spread the joy...

Iran’s ambitions, which have cast a long shadow over the greater Middle East, may serve as a common bond keeping a frail peace process intact despite threats that have arisen even before the negotiations open Thursday at the State Department.

Iran’s nuclear program and spreading political influence through a swath of Sunni Arab countries have alarmed the region’s kings and elected autocrats for years.

ONOZ! Not the kings and autocrats!

As the clock ticks down…

Blue wire? Or red wire? Which one do I cut–BOOM!

…on predominantly Shiite Iran’s nuclear program, though, it becomes more urgent for Israel and its Arab neighbors to achieve peace and face together the shared threat to their security and political stability.

The dynamic brings an “enemy of my enemy” calculation to this round of talks, binding the Jewish state’s security interests to those of its Sunni Arab neighbors more tightly than in the past.

You don’t have to be an Iranian citizen to recognize that Iran is run by scary assholes. But could not the same be said by any other citizen in the Middle East, Israel included? And, ya know, it’s funny — just yesterday the President Who Cannot Be Doubted (except in the most ludicrous ways) announced the withdrawal of combat forces from a Middle Eastern country that some nation run by a religious zealot invaded illegally, destabilized, set up a torture prison, divvied up winnings to corporate pals, and threw into civil war. You’d think that might have some influence on the political climate of the region.

But let us not re-litigate the past. Let us move forward to a bright new tomorrow. “Turn the page,” as it was recently said.

Netanyahu will need Obama’s support if he decides to undertake a military strike against Iran, either before or after he carries it out. His willingness to stick with peace talks, which Obama has called a priority, would win him goodwill in what has so far been a stormy relationship between the two men.

All in good faith, then.

Spread the joy...