Taxing

Personally, I would rather see my tax dollars going to universal health care than to unnecessary and illegal wars.

From National Priorities Project Tallies Cost of War:

These new appropriations bring total war-related spending for Iraq to $747.3 billion and for Afghanistan to $299 billion, with total war costs of $1.05 trillion.

It’s also upsetting to me to learn of another useless and illegal use of tax dollars.

From When prayers fly at Capitol, someone gets mad by Marc Hansen:

Those pesky atheists are at it again. First, they put ads on metro buses telling nonbelievers, "You are not alone."



Now, according to a letter sent to Iowa legislators, they want our elected officials to stop inviting clergy to begin each day of the 2010 session with an official prayer.



Besides violating the separation of church and state, the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers say, it costs too much. Clergy members receive $10 per prayer and mileage from the home district and back.

The group's president — quoting the House Financial Office — says the state spends $2,606 per session on the prayers. If it seems like walking-around money, even walking-around money is scarce these days.



What's more, during the prayers, the doors to the House and Senate close, meaning clerks, pages, and legislative staff members are held captive.

I'd Be Happier If He Wiped It Off

From a Kyle Michel Sullivan comment at Hullabaloo:

People never learn. Bush fucked Afghanistan up but it'll be Obama's fault when we don't win it. Bush fucked the economy up, but it'll be Obama's fault if it doesn't turn around before 2010. Bush destroyed America's credibility around the world with his policies of kidnapping and torture, but it'll be Obama's fault for not throwing every member of Bush's vile cabinet into jail. Yet Obama's acting like we can still all just get along. Obama stepped into shit, but it IS his own damn fault he hasn't wiped it off his shoe. And once again, he's allowing the shit to stay right where it is by escalating the war in Afghanistan, and history be damned for daring to show no one can win in that part of the world. Period.

The Internets Today

I’ve been reading some of what has been rattling around in the internets tubes out there today and that is the best way to describe it. Out there.

After reading this post by Jonathan Schwarz several times my reaction remains the same. Huh? I must be missing something.

There also seems to be a meme spreading out in tube land that the people who are critical of Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan are wrong to criticize Obama because:

• Obama is simply keeping his campaign promise to escalate the war in Afghanistan, you stupid fucks!
  


• Ignore history. The fact that the Soviets couldn’t win in Afghanistan is irrelevant, you stupid fucks!


• Obama says we will send more troops now so that we can leave Afghanistan in 18 months, you stupid fucks!

And this stuff is from leftist leaning sites. Go figure.

Will Obama 1.0 Help Create Osama 2.0?

From Tomasky, Moore, and Afghanistan by Lindsay Beyerstein:

…when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, a lot of people in the Muslim world saw it as struggle of Christendom vs. Islam. As a result, Afghanistan became a destination for would-be jihadists from all over the world. That's how Osama bin Laden got his start. If our goal is ultimately to marginalize Islamic extremists, we should be wary about escalating the kind of fight that galvanized them in the first place.

Over There

From Here We Go Again by Robert Scheer:

It is already a 30-year war begun by one Democratic president, and thanks to the political opportunism of the current commander in chief the Afghanistan war is still without end or logical purpose. President Barack Obama’s own top national security adviser has stated that there are fewer than 100 al-Qaida members in Afghanistan and that they are not capable of launching attacks. What superheroes they must be, then, to require 100,000 U.S. troops to contain them.

“Over there, over there, send the word, send the word, over there,

That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,

The drums rum-tum-ming everywhere

So prepare, say a prayer, send the word, send the word to beware

We'll be over, we're coming over,
And we won't come back 'til it's over Over There!” George M. Cohan

"We're fighting them there, so we don't have to fight them here.” George W. Bush

Should Obama change his name to George to fit in? Perhaps, King George the Second?

Isn’t there something incredibly immoral about fighting our battles on someone else’s turf? I simply raise the question. I’m not saying that I want the battle to be fought in the United States. I also am not saying that nothing should be done. I simply ask the question. By way of explanation, here is another question. Why should the lives of the civilians of Afghanistan count for less than the lives of the civilians of the United States?

Will it ever be over, over there?

The Good News And The Bad News

The good news of the day:
"I have no aspirations for further office," Cheney said in an interview with Politico.

The bad news of the day:
Barack Obama seems to be morphing into Dick Cheney: Obama Sending 30,000 More Troops To Afghanistan.

Meet The New War President, Same As The Old War President?

From An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore by Michael Moore:

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God's sake, stop.

There is more here.

I used to think that Obama was intelligent and moral. Now I’m not so sure. How smart is it to turn the Left against you when the Right already hates your guts? And, how moral is it to become the new War President?

Finish The Job

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana

Surely Barack Obama is aware of what happened to the Soviet Union when they tried to ‘finish the job’ in Afghanistan.

From Obama May Add 30,000 Troops in Afghanistan by Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt:

President Obama said Tuesday that he was determined to “finish the job” in Afghanistan, and his aides signaled to allies that he would send as many as 25,000 to 30,000 additional American troops there even as they cautioned that the final number remained in flux.

These three comments speak for me and sum up my thoughts on this issue quite accurately:

From Baffled Observer:

"Finish the job"? What job is he talking about? The job of assuring economic ruin at home while developing an ever-increasing supply of terrorists abroad? The job of propping up one of the most corrupt regimes in the world? The job of appeasing the military-industrial complex, sponsoring and committing torture, and destroying our Bill of Rights? Or all of them?

From avrds:

Finish the job. I wonder what that means?

Bring both Afghanistan and the U.S. to its knees?

This is an occupation that neither country wants nor can afford and will probably prove to be the final blow to the U.S. empire.

Ironic indeed that President Obama will now be ultimately responsible for it, not the Bush-Cheney presidency.

When will this country ever learn?

From margaret:

Wonderful, just wonderful. So Obama has to prove he isn't an arugula eating sissy by out-Bushing Bush. The goof-ball doesn't understand that many, like me, voted for him, ‘specifically,’ because he promised to bring the troops home.

Why do I even bother to vote?

Real men end wars, they don’t prolong them.

What Do The Afghans Think?

“The world's goin' crazy and
Nobody gives a damn anymore.
And they're breakin' off relationships and
Leavin' on sailin' ships for far and distant shores.
You're my brother,
Though I didn't know you yesterday.
I'm your brother.
Together we can find a way” Ray Davies

Noam Chomsky condemns 'immoral' Afghan war

The Left thinks that Glenn Beck is crazy. The Right thinks that Noam Chomsky is crazy. Fine. To each his own, I suppose. I do have one question. Why does Glenn Beck get so much more attention than Noam Chomsky does? After all, they're both crazy, and the United States just loves crazy right now.

It must be that damn liberal media. They’re just plain crazy.

Assuming that the Afghans aren’t crazy, they probably think that all Americans are crazy.

Hate

Sometimes I receive comments to something I have posted here at No Countries No Religion. Sometimes the comments make no sense to me. More often than not they are interesting. Even if I don’t agree, I appreciate the feedback. Sometimes, a comment may have a way of forcing me to think. These are the most interesting comments, even though they have a way of exhausting me.

Yesterday I asked the question Why All The Hate? This question was prompted by the recent terrorist bombings in India. The first comment I received to this post was:

Apparently, it's not just the US they hate... they hate India, they hate Israel, they hate Denmark, they hate Britain, they hate Australia...

What DON'T they hate?! I think THAT list is a lot smaller.

There is not a lot to that comment, but for some reason it is one of those ones that made me think. So I am responding to it here. It sparked some thoughts that I would like to share. Since the comment is short and I don’t want to make any assumptions I wish to make it clear that not all of what follows is a direct response to this comment.

The point made by the comment is valid, and it is a good one. The most radical of terrorists do seem to hate everyone. I’d still like to know why they do. In simple terms I’d like to see an end to all the hate and the violence that comes from it. How do we do that? By adding more violence to the mix, or by trying to find out where all the hate comes from? Logically, it seems that if we could find the cause of the hate, we could possibly stop the hate, and the violence. I know that some have said this before. I know that many consider this to be naive. In spite of that, I think that it bears repeating, and that it is the best way of trying to solve the problem.

I do not condone anger or hate. I believe that what the terrorists are doing is wrong. That doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try to understand their motivations.

I’ll repeat the last quote from the CNN article that I previously posted:

Indian Mujahedeen claimed responsibility in May for near-simultaneous bomb attacks that killed 63 people in the northwest Indian city of Jaipur. In that claim, the group declared "open war" against India in retaliation for what it said were 60 years of Muslim persecution and the country's support of U.S. policies.

This is the reason that I asked: “Why do they hate the United States so much?” Also, the reference to “60 years of Muslim persecution” seems to be a direct reference to Israel. After all, they recently celebrated 60 years of their existence. The United States picked sides. The United States strongly supports Israel. The United States strongly supports violence, and has for a very long time.

Anger and hate can be misdirected. Frequently it is directed at whoever happens to be the closest. If you are a stay-at-home parent, it is likely that you have experienced misdirected anger toward your child, when you are actually angry with your spouse, or something or someone else. Your child just happens to be the closest person at the time.

India is closer than the United States. The Indian Mujahedeen, I assume, are in India. If the United States were geographically closer to them I would think that they would be bombing in United States cities as well, since they specifically mention dislike of U.S. policy.

It is extremely distressing to me as a U.S. citizen that my government is acting in ways that I view as immoral, unfair, and unlawful. So while I definitely do not deny that the terrorists seem to hate nearly everyone, as a U.S. citizen I can take part in U.S. politics in a way that may effect a change for the better.

The big question is how to stop all the violence, anger, and hate? Do we do it with more violence, anger, and hate?

In my personal life talking has proven to be the best way for me to solve problems and deal with anger. It seems to me that this would be the best way to deal with global problems of anger. Yet, the United States leadership currently opposes this, and denigrates those that propose it as a solution. Why can’t we negotiate with terrorists in this case? This is not a hostage situation. Even if talking is not the best solution why eliminate the use of it? Can’t we use all the help and resources we can find to solve the problem of global terrorism? Why must violence be the only choice?

In the United States my views on this subject are not given very much credence, in fact they are usually mocked and ridiculed. More violence has become the accepted solution. I don’t believe this is the right course of action. I believe that it will only make things worse. I don’t want things to become worse. The world is in terrible shape as it is.

The Bush Administration has elevated the status of the terrorists into something that they are not. By using the full force of the United States military and declaring war on them the Administration has given them the equivalent status of a country. Because of Bush they are bigger than they deserve to be. It is very likely, as well, that they are bigger in numbers than before Bush, but that is not what I mean here.

I believe that the reason that the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq was because the Bush Administration felt that it had to do something in response to 9/11, and they were too stupid to come up with any other ideas.

Of course, the reasons for the terrorist strikes around the world pre-date 9/11. 9/11 didn’t really change anything (only its magnitude was different), but the Bush Administration certainly did make unprecedented changes to U.S. foreign policy in how it responded to what happened on that terrible day. The United States invaded two countries that were not directly responsible. The Bush Administration wrongly took advantage of an awestruck nation and utilized the worst parts of a mob mentality. This is not a sign of strong leadership.

From an emotional viewpoint what the Bush Administration did following 9/11 may have given short-term satisfaction to some. Some of those people are now finding that satisfaction to be short-lived and not carrying over into the long-term. From a moral standpoint what the Bush Administration did was wrong. Also from an international law standpoint. From an intellectual standpoint what they did was simply stupid. They have effectively severed the use of alternative solutions to the problem of global terrorism. Violence is their solution. Torture is their solution. Eviscerating civil liberties is their solution. Secrecy is their solution. Lack of accountability is their solution. Turning the United States into a terrorist nation is their solution. These are solutions that I abhor. In fact they are not solutions at all. Not only are they morally wrong, they will simply make the problems we face worse.

The Bush Administration, and unfortunately also John McCain, are grasping at any reason they can to point to their “success.” Most of these reasons such as “the surge is working, violence in Iraq is down” are illogical and short term. For the short term violence from terrorists may be down in Iraq and the United States, but it is not in the rest of the world. I think that the United States is indirectly responsible for this violence because of its violent and oppressive foreign policies. Unfortunately citizens of countries such as India are suffering because of this.

War Funds

Is it just me, or is Congress doing this on a daily basis now?

From Congress passes new Iraq war funds by Richard Cowan:

The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved $161.8 billion in new funds to continue fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the next year, without timetables for withdrawing combat troops.

Read the rest here.

More Bush Failure

Today the BBC has a report on the Taliban and how much money they make from opium in Afghanistan. The problem of course is that opium is financing the Taliban. They use this money for arms and ammunition. And the Bush administration seems to be doing nothing about it.

From Taleban's '$100m opium takings' by Kate Clark:

The Taleban made an estimated $100m (£50m) in 2007 from Afghan farmers growing poppy for the opium trade, the United Nations says.

"The closer we look at it, the closer we see the insurgents [are] to the drugs trade," said David Belgrove, head of counter narcotics at the British embassy in Kabul.

"We can say that a lot of their arms and ammunition are being funded directly by the drugs trade."

Let’s step back in time to almost TWO years ago.

From High on Opium, Not Democracy by Robert Scheer:

The good news, for drug fiends, is that Afghanistan has just harvested its biggest opium crop ever, up a whopping 59 percent from last year and big enough to cover 130 percent of the entire world market. The street price for illegal heroin, 92 percent of which now comes from Afghanistan, should be way down from Bangkok to London, and for those shooting up in the back alleys of Chicago. The bad news, for the rest of us, is that in Bush-liberated Afghanistan, billions in drug profits are financing the Taliban.

Remember them, the guys who harbored the Al Qaeda terrorists, who gifted us with the 9/11 attacks five years ago, that President Bush promised to eliminate? Well, it turns out that while he was distracted with Iraq, the patrons of terrorism were very much in business back where the 9/11 attack was hatched, turning Afghanistan into a narco-state that provides a lucrative source of cash for the "evildoers" Bush forgot about.

What the Bush Administration will not confront in Afghanistan, or in Iraq, is that its ill-conceived and disastrously executed nation-building schemes are sinking into the swamp of local and historical realities. Enamored of American military might but having little understanding of the world beyond, Bush and his team have ignored Gen. Colin Powell's reported "you break it, you own it" warnings, floundering after initial military victories and ultimately strengthening the hand of local and international terrorists. Rather than take care of business in Afghanistan after 9/11, Bush and clueless US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld allowed bin Laden to slip out of the Tora Bora caves to plan more attacks and the Taliban to regroup. Instead, Bush and Co. threw the bulk of our military and aid resources into a disastrous attempt to remake oil-rich Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, into an American puppet state.

Does President Bush care about this problem at all? Is he doing anything about it?

Speaking of terrorism. This is what we get from the McCain camp today.

Whatever Happened To "If It Bleeds It Leads"?

Selected bits from Reporters Say Networks Put Wars on Back Burner by Brian Stelter:

Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever.

“If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts,” Ms. Logan said.

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

Ms. Logan said she begged for months to be embedded with a group of Navy Seals, and when she came back with the story, a CBS producer said to her, “One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform.”

Both Ms. Logan and Mr. McCarthy noted that more coalition soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in May than in Iraq. No American television network has a full-time correspondent in Afghanistan, although CNN recently said it would open a bureau in Kabul.

Journalists at all three American television networks with evening newscasts expressed worries that their news organizations would withdraw from the Iraqi capital after the November presidential election. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity in order to avoid offending their employers.

Does this story give you a sense of deja vu? Well, perhaps this is the reason why.

"I'm Running Out Of Funny Lines"

Of all people, given his time in Vietnam, John McCain should know that war is no laughing matter.

From McCain Greeted by Antiwar Protesters at DC Speech by Juliet Eilperin:

It might have taken Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) a while to figure out how to deal with hecklers, but he seems to have nearly mastered it at this point.

Just minutes after the presumptive GOP nominee began speaking at the National Federation of Independent Business and eBay 2008 National Small Business Summit today here in the District, a protester stood up in the audience and began screaming "War is bad for small business!" As security officers hauled the woman away, McCain started riffing on how the incident highlighted the need for a more civil political debate this year.

"One of the things Americans are tired of, one of the things they're tired of is people yelling at each other in America, have you noticed that?" he said, to loud applause. "They want us to respect each other's opinions.... Americans want a dialogue."

"I'm running out of funny lines," he bemoaned to the crowd.

Read more here.

How the hell can you have a dialogue when one side is constantly hauled out by security? That is not a dialogue, that is a monologue. And like I said war is not funny. Monologues belong with Jay Leno and David Letterman, not in political debates. Americans are sick and tired of war Senator McCain. Try and get with the program.