Dr. Laura has announced she will end her show following criticism for her repeated use of the “N-word” at a black caller on her show. Classic white whining about her “First Amendment rights” and “some special-interest group deciding this is a time to silence a voice of dissent.” She does “not want to live in fear anymore.” Remember, the worst thing you can do to a white person is point out their racism. Worse than the HOLOCAUST!!!
But don’t get her wrong: “I’m not quitting.” She is now “freer to say the things that I believe need to be said for people in this country.” Like, say, insisting black people not get so testy when they hear white people use the “N-word” with manic glee.
Somewhere Sarah Palin is winking with approval. Is this a kind of “going Galt” among right wing nutjobs? Quit a position of influence and responsibility in a petulant gesture with delusions of somehow leading the country without the power that position granted (governor, nationally distributed talk show). To Palin’s credit, she has turned her Facebook and Twitter accounts into platforms for launching disinformation campaigns that have had real effects on public policy — “death panels.” But I think that’s a one-trick pony. Schlessinger has none of Palin’s soap opera/divisive appeal.
I’m not saying Dr. Laura will go quietly into that dark night, of course. She’ll probably join Alan Keyes in the asteroid belt of conservo-cranks, floating around until some odd gravitational force dislodges them from their orbit and hurls them into the sun, where they’ll crash and burn.
UPDATE (8/18/2010): I knew the comparison between Dr. Laura and Sarah Palin was obvious, but never predicted Palin would latch onto it with pride.
In a previous post about the futility of preventing Iran (or anyone else) from developing nuclear weapons, I wrongly mentioned that Iran has maintained the right to do so. That was faulty memory. I should have looked up the source and gotten it right. My bad. Iran maintains the right to develop nuclear fuel, but also maintains that developing nuclear weapons is contrary to Islam. From the BBC:
Iran has an “inalienable right” to produce nuclear fuel, the country’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has told the United Nations.
Speaking before the General Assembly, he invited other states and private companies to help with the programme.
He strongly criticised US arms policies and said Islam precluded Iran from having atomic weapons.
Under the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran is entitled to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Wikipedia has a more thorough history of the Iranian nuclear power issue. Props to Rojo for correcting me. I don’t want my mistake to throw another log on the bonfire of disinformation already putting smoke in our eyes.
So there is no proof that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program, and has publicly stated it does not want to. I think the source of my mistaken assumption that they had maintained a right — other than the constant buzz of fear and war-stroking among well-placed talking heads — is my own distrust of such pronouncements. Sure, Mahmoud, your religion forbids it. That’s not very convincing. General history of religious violence (by any religion you care to name) and the particular repressive application of violence against Iranian citizens by its own government make it hard for me to take claims of religious prohibition seriously. I don’t take U.S. efforts at nuclear arms reduction very seriously, either; we may cut them back as a good will gesture to other nuclear armed states, but we will never reach zero. That’s not in the interests of our militarized corporate state.
Yet this is hypocrisy to which we’ve grown so accustomed that nobody seems to notice it any more. The nuclear club is meant to be exclusive. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty recognises the five permanent members of the UN security council as “nuclear weapons states”, committing them to act as bouncers at the club door. The treaty theoretically obliges these members to ditch their own nukes in the fullness of time – an aptly pompous expression, for an otherwise nuke-free world would make a rogue state with even one bomb so powerful that the chances of universal disarmament are zero. Ever since Hiroshima, we’ve been faced with the depressing fact that you cannot un-invent something.
You also cannot retain a device for yourself and then lecture others that they are not “entitled” to it. Iran is, alas, just as entitled to nuclear weapons as the US and Britain. Ditto North Korea. All the Obama administration has the moral and political right to assert is: “We don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons.” To which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would quite sensibly respond: “So what?”
Which, insofar as enrichment of uranium for domestic nuclear energy use goes, he has. Granted, the IAEA has been frustrated in its attempts to verify the existence of an Iranian nukes program at all, but Iran has maintained the right to develop one. And as I have said before, we can do nothing to stop them. Which doesn’t mean someone won’t try.
The story of U.S. counterinsurgency “success” and military withdrawal is a bed-time tale told to put the American public to sleep. So argues Hannah Gurman in a Salon piece that punctures several propaganda balloons floated by the ObamAdmin, GOP and Dem hawks, and the usual right-thinkers among the commentariat. Here is one to keep in mind as the president seeks to “move forward”:
The oil and gas companies are not the only ones who will profit from the postwar order in Iraq. The United States military and defense industry will make out well, too. Despite claims to the contrary, this is not the end of the U.S. military presence in Iraq. In addition to the several bases that will remain active, housing the soldiers and private contractors whose titles will change to advisors, there will be an indefinite state of dependency on U.S.-manufactured weapons and technology. Defense companies, such as ARINC will continue to make hundreds of millions providing Mi-17 helicopters and other military hardware and logistics to Iraq.
While the Ministry of Information does not advertise the reality of America’s enduring military presence in Iraq, it is quick to announce a civilian “surge” in the country. Along these lines, officials have been boasting about the massive U.S. embassy in Baghdad. “Along with the Great Wall of China,” said Ambassador Hill, “its one of those things you can see with the naked eye from outer space. I mean, it’s huge.” Indeed. At 104 acres, it is the largest U.S. embassy in the world. In addition to six apartment buildings, it has a luxury pool, as well as a water and sewage treatment plant. Stop for a second and reflect on these last two amenities. They give you some measure of what American officials really know but aren’t saying about the state of drinking water and sanitation in Iraq. The State Department has requested a mini-army to protect this Fortress America — including 24 Black Hawk helicopters and 50 bomb-resistant vehicles. Again, stop for a minute and ask yourself what this really suggests. The shadow army says a lot more than the official pronouncements do about the true state of security in Iraq.
We’ll be back. We have barely left. Think of the U.S. embassy in Iraq as a kind of well-armed anchor baby.
Instead of “the hammer,” in the words of John O. Brennan, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, America will rely on the “scalpel.” In a speech in May, Mr. Brennan, an architect of the White House strategy, used this analogy while pledging a “multigenerational” campaign against Al Qaeda and its extremist affiliates.
Yet such wars come with many risks: the potential for botched operations that fuel anti-American rage; a blurring of the lines between soldiers and spies that could put troops at risk of being denied Geneva Convention protections; a weakening of the Congressional oversight system put in place to prevent abuses by America’s secret operatives; and a reliance on authoritarian foreign leaders and surrogates with sometimes murky loyalties.
This is the “realist” strategy proposed counter to the dominant neo-con pipe dreams of the Bush era now put into practice. It begs new definitions of realism, however. Anyone remember the enmity we incurred employing such tactics during the Cold War throughout Latin and South Americas, Africa and Asia? Indeed, as the NYTimes report notes, some of the same players who waged proxy wars in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, hiring such folks as Osama bin Laden as our proxy, are now crafting the covert war strategy.
Yet there is a difference: we have entered a new era of integrated violence by the corporate state. As the report notes, the CIA has become a “paramilitary organization” with little Congressional oversight; the Pentagon has taken a greater role in intelligence activity; and private contractors — a.k.a., mercenaries — assume more responsibility and power. All the while rules of engagement, intelligence verification and accountability wither away.
Also — significantly — there is the greater reliance on technology, a trend we have seen grow since the first Gulf War, when we learned our “smart bombs” were not so smart. Contra the Obama White House’s stated objective of fighting small scale, surgical conflicts with al Qaeda to reduce hostile blow-back from the world’s poor, there is a pattern: Less reliable information, more civilian casualties, less trustworthy informants with greater conflicts of interest, more anger among the survivors, more recruits for jihadist groups.
