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While in the U.S. Senate, Paul Kirk, the interim U.S. Senator who took Ted Kennedy’s seat, said, “Without a legitimate and credible Afghan partner, that counterinsurgency strategy is fundamentally flawed. The current Afghan government is neither legitimate nor credible. . . . We should not send a single additional dollar in aid or add a single American serviceman or woman to the 68,000 already courageously deployed in Afghanistan until we see a meaningful move by the Karzai regime to root out its corruption.” 

Kirk was essentially arguing that the U.S. was enabling (i.e., in the sense that one enables an alcoholic) President Karzai, who had been reelected by widespread fraud. Whether the U.S. Government was trying to have it both ways, or was utterly unwilling to put its money where American principles are, the perception around the world was probably that the United States had sold itself out for short-term strategic/military advantage. 

How resilient are principles that are upheld only when they don't cost anything?  Could it be that standing more on principle--insisting on fair and free elections as a precondition for any American aid and military involvement--would mitigate the need for a surge? Such thinking runs against the grain in the modern world, which is actually rather primitive in its insistance on knee-jerk force.  An eye for an eye and the world will be blind (Gandhi).  September 11, 2001: we must hit back.  There is no other option. They must pay. Ironically, practicing Christians were not only cheering, but also leading the charge.  An eye for an eye.

“Be realistic!” you might say.  "It's a real world out there!" Ok, how about this: the U.S. Government could have concentrated its military force in Afghanistan on the actual culprits, rather than on rebuilding the country or taking on the Taliban.  Is it really so idealistic to cut off U.S. aid to autocratic governments? I suspect that we are limited by the status quo as a normative and descriptive limitation that is actually quite dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary.  In other words, we believe our self-constructed walls are real; we don't see how rigid we have become.

Given the emphasis on force, does it make all that much difference who is occupying the U.S. Presidency? President Bush invaded Iraq. President Obama criticized this policy then led a surge of his own in Afghanistan.  Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, and both Bush II and Obama played ball with these pay-masters.  Meanwhile, we were mollified with the government's “scoldings” of Wall Street banks (the strongest of which went back to their old ways anyway).  Can we blame the bankers for ignoring government officials whose principled leadership is so contingent? People, especially powerful people--like Wall Street bankers and Karzai--can sniff hypocrisy and automatically reduce the respect given.

The United States is like a giant machine, or a very fat person, who can only move slowly…turning woefully slow with a rudder that is too small.    Meanwhile, we vaunt our ship as the biggest ever made: A city on the hill, from Puritan lore. We can’t sink, we assure each other.  But our ship of state is made of iron. I assure you, it can sink, and all the more because we have drifted out into deep water without realizing how far we have gone…how far off course.  Our rudder is too small for our mechanized monstrosity--our Titanic laden with $14 tillion in federal debt alone (not counting those of the states). Our primative knee-jerk reactiong after 911 suggests that everything we know is wrong, even as we presume we can’t be wrong.   So as we rearrange the deck-chairs at our mascurade dance, we order more champaigne and congraduate each other on having the biggest ship.  Meanwhile, is anyone looking ahead for icebergs?  We are so sure of our ship, and thus so vulnerable.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/12/01/afghanistan.liberals/index.html

Barak Obama was in December of 2009 the first sitting U.S. president in 90 years and the third ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet he did so under the long shadow of the war in Afghanistan, where he was ordering 30,000 more troops into battle.  Could Truman’s decision to drop the A-bomb on Japan be along the same logic because it was meant to preempt the loss of life that would have come had the US invaded Japan?  President Reagan’s peace through strength logic was that a military build-up would forestall or prevent war from breaking out (hence no loss of life would be involved even in the forestalling).   The logic of awarding a surge President with a peace prize seems more dubious.  However, few today would compliment Chamberlain for having appeased Hitler (even though the prime minister was secretly stalling for time to build up the British forces). Perhaps with the dangerous plans presumably being hatched in Afganistan in 2009 against American cities, it could be argued that a surge is preventative of future conflict.  However, such a logic introduces a slippery slope.   In other words, if the ends justify the means, then virtually anything can be justified as means as long as it is tied to the end.  Human beings have a rather creative ability to rationalize their expedient and self-serving actions.  It would be far simpler were the peace prize awarded to someone who clearly opposed war and did something about it without engaging in it himself; even so, there are few like Gandhi in any given generation, and far more leaders wage war in the supposed (or real) interests of peace.  I contend that there are in any year enough people who stand up for peace without engaging in war that the peace prize could be awarded to them. Such a policy would clearly distinguish such role models from the ends justify the means rationalizers rather than enable the latter under a subterfuge of peace.. 

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34358659/ns/politics-white_house/

In the fall of 2010, I heard the following comment on Fox News: “The government should spend more on the war in Afghanistan in order to fight terrorism. The problem is that the government has gotten into entitlements”  (e.g. food stamps, public housing, social security, medicare, medicaid).  This is distinct from saying that the federal government should concentrate on foreign policy and military, with entitlements being funded and decided by the states. Such a statement would be for federalism rather than about priorities.  Too often, it is difficult to discern whether republican office-holders are more interested in greater federalism or a different sense of government in general. The republicans are not saying they want a smaller government, for they want more military spending.  I believe the republican vision is for a different sort of government, rather than for a return to federalism (i.e., more of a balance of power/domains between the state governments and the U.S. Government). Republicans believe that government (regardless of the level) exists to fund foreign affairs and war…not to fund poor people.  That is, military contractors rather than poor people. I think this political ideology is fairly unique in the world today.  Certainly most Europeans in the E.U. view redistributive rights for the basics needed for living as a legitimate part of government.  In contrast, many in the U.S. believe that the market mechanism (i.e., resources as commodities produced and distributed by private enterprise) trumps basic needs (as the market does not guarantee that the needs are met, whereas a redistributive sustenance right does). Perhaps the basic question is whether any citizen of the United States should be allowed to go without necessities (basic food, shelter and health-care).  In other words, it can and indeed should be asked whether the right to survival (i.e., life) is part of the social contract of the American political society.  I suggest that the media and our representatives ought to participate in a sustained debate on this question directly, rather than deviating to particular hot-button issues.

According to James Madison in Federalist #51, “the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger” in the state of nature. Nor is the weaker secured against starvation and sickness.  Life, as Thomas Hobbes writes, is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” in the state of nature.  The social contract undergirding a political society is meant to alleviate the fear of the want of necessities (and self-defense) while working for the happiness of the members.  In other words, there is a right to shelter, food and medical care in a social contract that takes its members out of the state of nature; otherwise, the society is marginal as an answer to the insecurity that exists in the state of nature.

Therefore, I contend that those Americans who want to extend the Bush tax cuts for those making over $200,000 and cut unemployment compensation are essentially enabling their greed to compromise the social contract.  If that contract is weakened and some members of society placed back in the state of nature, then it is important for the wealthy to realize that their own right of property is based on that social contract.  In other words, cutting off food and shelter for others may free them up to take your property, for they are no longer protected by the social contract against the state of nature.  If sustenance as a right is abridged, then so too is the right of property, because neither sustenance nor property is guaranteed in the state of nature.

Republican outside groups are outspending democrats by eight to one in the 2010 election cycle.  Citizens United, the court case allowing unlimited (and anonymous) corporate political spending (as if spending were speech!), is benefiting the republicans. The republican party advocates policies that are more in the financial interest of the wealthy (e.g., cutting entitlements and extending the Bush tax cuts for those over $200,000). In my view, the case opens up the dichotomy between a plutocracy (rule by wealth) and a representative democracy (rule by the people through their representatives). Although the latter is not perfect (esp when most of the people are idiots), it is better than rule by the moneyed interests (i.e., the status quo).  It is ironic that after electing real change, the forces of the status quo would gain the upper hand. Since the vast majority of American voters are not wealthy, the question is perhaps whether we can be effectively manipulated by political ads into voting for the interests of the wealthy. For example, one outside group had an ad complaining about the U.S. government’s debt and urging less spending on entitlements.  No mention is made of the roughly $1 trillion spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  As another example, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy is put in terms of the latter using the savings to hire workers, even though studies show that such tax savings are typically saved. An educated electorate seems to me the best means of resisting such manipulation. Essentially, the distinction can be said to be between the vested interests of the status quo and those of real change.  Too much power going to the wealthy can stultify the political system, such that we do not adapt.  An organism that does not adapt to a changing environment does not tend to survive.