Books reviews

I just finished reading/listening to the books above and they made an interesting trilogy.  Legacy of Ashes was a phenomenal book which traced the history of the CIA from its origins until 2007.  I found it particularly interesting how, from its very inception, the agency was characterized as one that saw any sort of control (from the President, congress, or the constitution) as interference.  The inability of the agency to voluntarily stay within the limits of its charter raises serious questions about the wisdom of having a secret agency whose central function requires deceit and subversion in an open democracy.

I have to admit, I’ve bought into the myth of the CIA as much as everyone else so it was a bit of a disappointment to hear the numerous instances where intelligence and analytical work was shoddy or took a back seat to political considerations or cowboys who decided they knew what was in the best interests of the U.S. and did their own thing.  It was that covert action, usually done with no consideration of possible consequences that has to make one wonder if we wouldn’t be better off without such an agency.

A good (semi) counter point would be Robert Baer’s See No Evil which is a brilliant description of the CIA from a covert operators point of view.  After reading his book you do kind of think that perhaps Baer (and those few like him) really does know what’s best for the country and should be allowed to just ‘get on with it’.  I’ll have to spend some time trying to reconcile those two accounts.  Both books do seem to agree, however, on the idea that the CIA is hobbled by a new wave of inexperienced analysts, agents as well as a glut of bureaucrats.

State of Denial doesn’t really tell you anything you don’t already know providing you haven’t been in a coma during the past five years.  Still, it just lets you know that the gross incompetence is a well documented fact and not just a strong suspicion.

Armed Madhouse is great because its one of those books that gives you an alternative narrative to what’s going on today in America’s political landscape.  I’m not entirely convinced that Palast is providing the best explaination for what’s been going on in America since 2001 (when a book tries to question so many closely held assumptions like this one does, it would be a big help to provide links to supporting evidence) but it does get you to think.  I found his defense of Hugo Chavez particularly interesting.

Flash from Obama HQ

Yesterday I went to the local Barack Obama campaign headquarters to attend an organizational meeting. I’ve never been involved in a political campaign before and wanted to see what happens at these sorts of places. It was a bit disappointing arriving at the place since the phrase ‘campaign headquarters’ conjures up all sorts of images in my head of political flacks running around, media demanding statements and that sort of thing but, in fact, the place was a rather non-descript, squat building that actually belonged to my local congressman (the outstanding Patrick Murphy (who I don’t think is a member of the Dropkick Murphy’s although, to be honest, I didn’t ask - (hey, check it out I’ve parenthesized a parenthesis!  This is like a mathematical equation!))) and was in desperate need of a good vacuuming.

That being said there was a pretty interesting mix of people at the meeting.  I’d say it was about a 50/50 mix of those who had worked political campaigns before and those totally new to the whole thing.  Of course, it was a bit messy for my tastes.  The fact that everyone is a volunteer and therefore not only has their own ideas of how to best do things but also has no hesitation in voicing those opinions left me wanting a little Stalinistic (or even Cheneyistic) order by the end of the 2 hour meeting but I guess that’s what democracy is all about.

I’ve yet to decide how much, if at all, I’ll dive into this politicking.  I’m afraid it might interfere with my plans for world domination.

Welcome to the 51st state - Iraq edition

Remember way back at the beginning of the war in Iraq? People like Donald Rumsfeld were saying that the probability of the U.S. wanting permanent bases in Iraq were “so low that it does not surprise me that it’s never been discussed in my presence — to my knowledge.” (Heck of a qualifier there, Brownie)

There’s an interesting piece in Salon about the issue here which not only highlights other administration weenies (like the wonderfully incompetent Karen Hughes) stating their shock, SHOCK that anyone could even think we’d want permanent bases in Iraq. It also raises some interesting questions as to why the media (at least here in the U.S.) hardly bothered to raise the question at all in the first few years of the war. I’m not sure if that was a reflection of the shoddy journalism that greased the wheels to get us into Iraq (sorry Charlie) or just a realization that asking the administration about permanent bases would just be a waste of time since it would be unlikely that they’d actually tell the truth.

So, it should come as no surprise that there are now reports (well, one report) that the U.S. is seeking permanent bases in Iraq (up to 58!) as part of a status of forces agreement. According to CNN this morning, the pentagon is saying such an agreement might be finalized by next month. If such an agreement comes into being, that’ll be another nail in the argument for withdrawing from Iraq, regardless of who’s elected in November. “What? Withdraw? But we just got these nifty new bases. We just built a Pizza Hut! If we leave now, the terrorists win. Perhaps we can revisit the issue in 100 years or so.”

By the way, McCain’s argument makes no sense. He says he wants to stay in Iraq so long as Americans aren’t getting “injured, or harmed or wounded or killed” but the reason for being there is because it’s a volatile part of the world where Al-Qaeda is active. So, how exactly would we defeat this huge Al-Qaeda threat without getting any Americans harmed? An eternal pillow fight war?

Which leads to the beauty of the Republican argument about staying in Iraq. We can’t leave when there’s fighting going on because that would be ‘cutting and running’ and we can’t leave when there’s no fighting going on because it might break out any time. So, under what conditions exactly could U.S. troops be brought back?

You’ve got a village idiot? Big deal, we’ve got a national one.

I’m really proud of my service in the military and my tour in Afghanistan.  I have a lot of positive emotions and memories from that time.

Under no circumstances, however, would I ever refer to time in a war zone as ‘romantic’ like Bush just did a few days ago.

“I must say, I’m a little envious,” Bush said. “If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.”

“It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger.”

Hmmm…if going to war is so exciting and romantic, I wonder how hard he tried to convince his kids to go.  Oh…I see the qualifying statement:  “and not employed here”.  I guess that means this fantastic, romantic experience should be reserved for unemployed (or unemployable) losers?  Is that how this guy sees people in the military?

I have to admit, there was a time when I would have thought that being in a war zone would be exciting and yes, maybe even a bit romantic.

Then I grew up.

She’s a brick….house!

I know this is causing a bit of a backlash here and the Obama camp is having to apologize but I for one was glad to hear Samantha Power’s remarks about Hillary Clinton:

She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything,”

Power wrote the phenomenal book A Problem from Hell about the U.S. response to genocide throughout the 20th century. I know it won’t get to this but if the Clinton campaign gets their collective panties in a bunch over this and starts acting too outraged, I’d love to hear Power point out that part of that great ‘35 year’ tradition of experience that Hillary keeps talking about included not only doing nothing during the Rwandan genocide (800,000 dead) but active American interference and foot dragging to prevent others from taking action as well.

How’s that for a 3a.m. call that didn’t get answered?

If I wasn’t already married I just might propose to her…

Update:  It appears the flak got too heavy and she had to resign.  Apparently, the thoroughly ‘vetted’ and ‘battle hardened’ Hillary Clinton was about to have an attack of the vapors because of the comments.

The Bush/Clinton dynasty has to end.  I don’t want to be in my 50s before I have an opportunity to vote for a president/vice president who doesn’t come from either family (oh wait…Jenna, Barbara and Chelsea will be old enough to run at the end of a Hillary reign).

Fred Thompson…Dynamo!!!

He apparently mustered up enough energy to quit.  This guy might be an even bigger slacker than me!

Everybody do the causus!

Pretty good news last night all around. I’m not a huge fan of Huckabee but hopefully his win will make the Republican party move a little closer to figuring out if it wants to be a theocratic party or not.

I was also thrilled to see Hillary come in third place. She reminds me more and more of the last few years of the Soviet Union as a parade of old men staggered to the leadership for no other reason than because they had been patient and it was their turn. Hillary is essentially running on the same argument not realizing (or not caring?) that it was just that sort of thinking that has resulted in so many Democratic defeats. Hopefully this Obama momentum can keep going.

UPDATE:

I forgot to mention CNN’s gratuitous use of computer graphics in an attempt to reach the ‘gee-whiz’ demographic.  The highlight was this floating pie chart that Anderson Cooper called up from the infernal depths with some sort of magic paper.

On the other hand I became so enamored with CNN’s big computer screen that they could use to call up all sorts of facts and maps that now I want my own ‘big board’ to refer to in my conversations.  It would have to be portable, because I’d want to be able to bring it with me and use in all of my conversations.  I’d live for the opportunity to say “Well, that’s a real good question.  Let’s see what the big board says!”

On flag pins and singing…

This weekend I was doing my military service and a small group of us started talking politics and the presidential candidates. In a (very) rare moment I was actually in agreement with my fellow soldiers in the opinion that Hillary Clinton would be bad both as a Democratic nominee and a president. We probably agreed for different reasons: Hillary just seems to be cut from the same cloth as the current regime to me. My compatriots (I think) just see her as the worst of a bad lot. Somehow the discussion turned to Obama and then we found out that one weaselly fellow horned in to our conversation and piped up with something like:

“The American people would never vote for someone who disrespects the country like he does.”

Apparently he was talking about this story where Obama committed the unforgivable sin of *gasp* not putting his hand on his heart during the national anthem.

Oh, my….I do declare….I fear I’m coming down with the vapors. Catch me before I faint!

Won’t someone please think about the children?!!!

Yes, in the finest Republican tradition of making every foible and instance of individuality into a sign of the imminent collapse of civilization, some are trying to use this ‘issue’ to prove that Obama is a secret America-hater who just can’t wait to become president so he can give Oklahoma to Bin Laden.

That wasn’t his only sin though. According to our Mr. Butinski he compounded his traitorous display by refusing to ‘attempt to sing the anthem’. It seems that real Americans mouth the words to the anthem (that must be how we catch spies), well, at least when they remember the words.

I didn’t really see a problem with it. Maybe he doesn’t like to sing? Perhaps he felt it more respectful to stand in silence while the song played and reflect on this great country. Maybe he just didn’t feel like singing. To be honest, I don’t really care. It seems to me the whole point of being American is that you have the freedom to do your own thing and not have your patriotism questioned. Quite frankly my initial reaction to people telling me I have to do something (especially when it’s to prove my loyalty or enthusiasm - regardless of how loyal or enthusiastic I may be) is to tell them to get stuffed and refuse to do it out of principle. Why do we teach kids to not follow the heard (’If Johnny jumps off the Empire State building, I suppose you’re going to jump off too.’) and resist peer pressure if we’re going to turn right around and advocate enforced patriotism. Sounds like something Stalin would approve of.

Ron Rosenbaum says it much better than me.

This is not a critique of the feeling of allegiance, just of the coerced Pledge of Allegiance. So don’t accuse me of being un-American or a lesser American than you, just less enthusiastic about an essentially anti-American practice.

The pledge is a kind of forced confession of orthodoxy. No, not water-boarding, but coercion nonetheless. Especially for peer-group-pressured school kids. Even if they have the right to opt out. In past school-prayer cases, the court has resisted the idea that the state should be implicated in even the social coercion or propagation of religion.Busybody school boards and bombastic anthem peddlers at ball games should let people find their way to allegiance in their own fashion rather than making “allegiance” an implement of state power used to extract oaths.

My line of reasoning didn’t resonate too well with my fellow soldiers who couldn’t seem to comprehend why anyone wouldn’t want to sing the anthem and that the freedoms upon which this country were founded might be all nice and fine in an abstract sense but should never get in the way of a good loyalty oath.

So I took a different approach…

Me: “So, you sing the anthem every time you hear it?”

Mr. Butinski: “I mouth the words.”

Me: “Why don’t you sing it loudly? What are you ashamed of? What, are you a communist or something? Why won’t you sing?”

I wasn’t quite clear how much of the song you had to lip-synch to be considered a good, red-blooded American but the whole thing was clearly ridiculous and not well thought out on his part. Clearly, we aren’t teaching enough civics in our schools.

Resistance Studies

I can’t remember how I stumbled upon this site but I found it pretty interesting.

In an attempt to remedy the lack of academic study in the field of resistance to power and its social transformation the School of Global Studies at Göteborg University has launched this Resistance Studies Network.

Confirming my status as uber-geek, I’m pretty excited about reading such things as:

• New Wars and Nonviolent Resistance
• The Political Underground

It all sounds vaguely subversive which I kind of dig anyway. Besides, they’re from Sweden so it’s got to be good!

T-minus 365 and counting

The 2008 presidential campaign is well underway and I have to admit, I’m less than pleased. Hillary Clinton has a huge lead over her competitors and while I’m inclined to vote Democrat, if Hillary is the nominee, I’ll be pulling that lever while holding my nose. It surprises me that even though it’s been brought up several times in debates, there isn’t much interest in the fact that if she’s elected it’ll mean by the end of her first term that members of two families will have been in charge of the strongest nation on earth for 24 years (32 years if you want to include George H.W. Bush’s 8 years as vice president). If she were to get reelected we’d be looking at 28 years (or 36 depending on how you’re counting) under the control of two families. I don’t want to get too conspiratorial about the whole thing but one does get to accumulate vast amounts of power by remaining that close to the center of power so long.

It also rubs me the wrong way that we can’t seem to elect someone to run this country of 300 million whose last name isn’t Bush or Clinton. The whole thing just seems vaguely anti-democratic somehow and reminds me of the waning days of the Roman republic when the two governing factions (the patricians, favoring the aristocratic families and the plebeians, favoring all the non-patricians) mostly came from a few old, wealthy families. Policies had more to do with strengthening the position of the ruling families than any sort of ideological conviction.

I could be totally off base, but I keep thinking that some part of Hillary’s success in the eyes of Democratic voters is the joy of pissing off Republicans by having a Clinton in the white house for four more years as payback for the George Bush years.  While revenge may be a dish best served cold, it’s not necessarily the best way to more the country forward.

So, I took this news that Ron Paul had a huge fund raising day as an encouraging sign for democracy. I’m not a supporter of Mr. Paul but I do respect his apparent intellectual consistency (which is leaps and bounds ahead of his Republican peers). The fact that substantial numbers of people are getting involved and excited about the political process is always good news in my opinion. Our current system is designed to prevent people from becoming politically active (with the exception of writing checks). Both major political parties would much rather people stay home and leave voting to the the few die-hards.  That way, there are no surprises.

The interesting thing about the November 5th fund raising drive for Mr. Paul is the use by some of his supporters of the movie “V for Vendetta“.  A quick look at YouTube will show a number of postings (and different search terms will pull up many more) that link his campaign with themes from the movie.  Now, I’m not sure how much this message resonates or how deeply people making this link are trying to go.  Is it just a convenient vessel to raise awareness and money with only a general ‘F’ you to the existing power structure?  Or, are Mr. Paul’s supporters connecting with the more anarchic themes of the movie (my understanding is that Alan Moore didn’t particularly like the movie, in part because the anarchy theme was played down but it’s still there) and a view of the government as oppressive and more dangerous than other potential threats?  You could make arguments either way but it’ll be interesting to see how that message might click with a wider audience.  I know many view Mr. Pauls supporters as a bunch of kooks, extremists and assorted flotsam and jetsam but given that  75% of Americans want the country to go in a different direction , plus Mr. Paul’s ability to continue generating headlines far in excess of what his poll numbers would suggest, he might just have the potential to keep the Republican race interesting.