Psychopolitik 2.0

Um…er…What the fuck?

John Stewart is at home kicking himself right now.  Terrible timing for a break.

General Petraeus states the obvious:

Iraqi leaders have failed to take advantage of a reduction in violence to make adequate progress toward resolving their political differences, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday.

Petraeus, who is preparing to testify to Congress next month on the Iraq war, said in an interview that “no one” in the U.S. and Iraqi governments “feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation,” or in the provision of basic public services.

No duh.  Considering how far back the sectarian tension there goes, along with the fact that no government can truly address these kinds of things in the first place, the expectation here is akin to an aerobics trainer expecting Michael Moore to do military-style “clap” pushups.  Anyway, moving on…

The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has won passage of some legislation that aids the cause of reconciliation, drawing praise from President Bush and his supporters. But the Iraqi government also has deferred action on some of its most important legislative goals, including laws governing the exploitation of Iraq’s oil resources, that the Bush administration had identified as necessary benchmarks of progress toward reconciliation. (emphasis mine)

As the laws referred to consist of the package mentioned here, which would give foreign oil companies long-term contracts and put their representatives in control of the majority of Iraqi oil fields, a version of which was put in place in Kurdistan that Dennis Kucinich pointed out served to funnel even more money  towards the pockets of a Bush loyalist, that line is way more literal than the author of the Petraeus article intended.  This kind of move being a “benchmark” could be seen as a reverse protection racket — “pass this bill or we won’t leave!” — if not for the bases already being constructed.

Apparently Iraqis are familiar with N.W.A., because the increasingly fundamentalist government there just took a policy cue from MC Ren:

The Iraqi government has ordered all policewomen to hand in their guns for redistribution to men or face having their pay withheld, thwarting a U.S. initiative to bring women into the nation’s police force.

The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, issued the order late last month, according to ministry documents, U.S. officials and several of the women. It affects all officers who have earned the title “policewoman” by graduating from the police academy. It does not apply to men in the same type of jobs.

Critics say the move is the latest sign of the religious and cultural conservatism that has taken hold in Iraq since Saddam Hussein’s ouster ushered in a government dominated by Shiite Muslims. Now, that tendency is hampering efforts to bring stability to Iraq by driving women from the force, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. David Phillips, who has led the effort to recruit female officers. […]

Policewomen say the decree also will leave them unable to protect themselves at work or off duty. Scores of police employees, both officers and administrative workers, have been killed by insurgents. Men and women have traditionally been allowed to carry their Glock pistols with them after hours for security.

“We are considered policewomen. We face kidnapping. We could be assassinated. If anyone knew where we worked, of course they would try to do something to us,” said a 27-year-old interviewed Sunday.

But…but Freedom Is On The March™!!  Islamo-Fascism™!!  9/11™!!  Dissent Is Un-American™!!

Props.

Why do they still even bother with National Intelligence Estimates if the president himself is going to ignore whatever they say?

Eh, at least no one died this time…

Ok, say the subject at hand is oil…

One can argue that there’s no value in it until it is discovered, brought up from the ground, and converted for human use. Thus, the value of it came from the labor required to make it useful.

Now, with that in mind, look at who tends to get the wealth from oil. Speculators, those with political connections, and corrupt, unrepresentative politicians. The US knows this all too well, oil vis-a-vis the dollar being the key to the clusterfuck we’re currently embroiled in. It is typical for people in the US concerned about this to say the following:

Our oil habit not only makes us dependent on some creepy suppliers, but we look like fools as we work nonstop to hand over our earnings to those who are rich by an accident of sitting atop oil someone else found and developed.

Makes sense. Problem is, that’s a quote from Victor Davis Hanson, a staunch supporter of the foreign policy status quo of “if you can’t get what you want, bomb everything”. He has taken this logic, and used it to slip in the suggestion that the US is somehow entitled to the natural resources of other countries. Somehow I doubt that’s what David Ricardo meant…

Props.

Cunning Realist, callin’ ‘em straight as they are:

A phrase that’s become popular is “a clash of cultures” and variations of it. The description’s appropriate. The first culture is one in which policymakers believe they’ve repealed the natural business cycle. This culture of moral hazard and push-button Fed liquidity makes it possible for 30-somethings to sit in front of computer screens in Manhattan and Connecticut and make millions from the flickering green dots, while that same liquidity debases the dollars held by wage earners, retirees, and prudent savers; it allows mediocre corporate executives to exercise stock options and become fabulously wealthy; it tells stock and real estate speculators that if things go south, someone sitting in an office in Washington will press the “print” button and make everything okay; it makes “bridges to nowhere” possible; and it allows a nation to launch a preventive war and decades-long occupation without a thought about how to pay for it. This culture depends on dollar hegemony.

The other culture is composed of a few countries, non-allies, that happen to occupy the ground above the natural resource most sensitive to Washington’s print button. Since they have the gall to object to our insistence on exchanging ever-depreciating pieces of paper for their main (and finite) natural resource, they both complicate our attempt at reinflation and profit from it.

I’ve pointed out elsewhere that, fiscal pipedreams of the State notwithstanding, our money is pegging itself to oil.  Who has the oil, and how we expect them to act, shows why that’s such a terrible outcome.  The underlying conflict, despite claims of concern about terrorism or “regional stability” (as if that were our concern anyway), is over when — not if — we will reach a point where the guns of this country are the only currency anyone will take seriously, in both senses of the word.

To be honest with you, the more I ponder it, the more I can’t decide: which is more pathetic, the fact of the group we’re heading down this path for in the first place, or that “our” rulers expect this to work forever?  Either we’re systematically insane, or our dignity & long-term security are cheap sells.

Sad, yet not surprising:

Esad Ismael broke the most important promise he ever made.

As his father lay on his deathbed two years ago, Ismael, 43, vowed never to sell his family’s home. His father and grandfather had spent all their savings to build the sprawling two-story house in Baghdad’s wealthy Mansour district 70 years ago. Family memories were tucked between every tile on the floor.

But Ismael, a Sunni clothing merchant, was living in an area that was falling under the control of the Mahdi Army, Iraq’s largest Shiite militia. Mindful of his promise to his dying father, he refused to move even after he began finding death threats pasted to his front door. After his brother was murdered, he gave up.

“It’s bad that I sold our home, but what is worse is that I sold it for only 145 million dinars,” Ismael said, naming a price equivalent to about $118,000 — less than half the house’s appraised value in late 2003. “It’s an insult to my father to sell it so low. But what choice did I have? They would have killed us.”

With hundreds of thousands of Baghdad residents having fled their homes for the relative safety of segregated neighborhoods or foreign countries, a clandestine system of buying and selling property off the books has supplanted more traditional real estate practices. If families being pushed out are lucky, they are able to sell their homes for some small price, as Ismael did. Wait too long, and their houses might be seized at gunpoint.

Consider it a more direct form of Eminent Domain…

Mr. “Double Guantanamo” brings us even more of his deep thoughts:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says that if terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb in a U.S. city while he was president he would retaliate “in a very dramatic and clear way.”

Posed that scenario while campaigning Friday in this early primary state, Romney said he didn’t want to say much more.

“The answer is you would retaliate and you’d retaliate in a very dramatic and clear way. I don’t want to be terribly more specific than that,” the former Massachusetts governor said.

“But there’s no question that people understand that the reason that we have the thousands upon thousands of nuclear warheads we have is that we intend to protect ourselves. And I would never shrink from protecting the American nation, the American people, nor shrink from retaliation if somebody used something as awful as a nuclear device. We will be safe.”

Yeesh…where to start with this one?

-Nuclear weapons are inherently non-defensive weapons, since the fallout & size of the blast inevitably kills tons of innocent people, so to say “protection” is the reason we have a ton of them makes no sense. You don’t use nukes unless you just want to kill a shitload of people.

-Saying there’d be a huge response if we were nuked is really pointless to say, since it’s common sense. Considering that some people were calling for nukes to be used right after 9/11, eye-for-an-eye would be demanded so loud & quickly there’d be no attempt to figure out who actually did the initial attack.

-The way he states this out of the blue sounds almost as if he WANTS the opportunity to do it.

This fear-mongering for votes is sad as hell, since if anyone thought about what was said they’d run screaming the other direction.

Am I even reading this right?

As he awaits a crucial progress report on Iraq, President Bush will try to put a twist on comparisons of the war to Vietnam by invoking the historical lessons of that conflict to argue against pulling out.

On Wednesday in Kansas City, Missouri, Bush will tell members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars that “then, as now, people argued that the real problem was America’s presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end,” according to speech excerpts released Tuesday by the White House.

“Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left,” Bush will say.

WTF?  Who in the HELL, other than him & his fellow absolute nutjobs, would seriously claim the problem with the Vietnam War was that our involvement wasn’t long enough?

“Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens, whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people,’ ‘re-education camps’ and ‘killing fields,’ ” the president will say.

Bad enough he’s invoking it at all, but this is to whitewash it.  Anyone who’d go as far as to claim our withdrawal was primarily responsible for the death of innocents is apparently unfamiliar with the phrase “we had to burn the village to save it”.

The president will also make the argument that withdrawing from Vietnam emboldened today’s terrorists by compromising U.S. credibility, citing a quote from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden that the American people would rise against the Iraq war the same way they rose against the war in Vietnam, according to the excerpts.

“Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility, but the terrorists see things differently,” Bush will say. (emphasis mine)

This isn’t the time for cherry picking.  What about the quotes — plural — where Bin Laden & his #2 have both said they hope we NEVER leave Iraq because we’re playing into their hands?

Denial: not a river in Egypt…:

US officials called security relations with Riyadh “very strong” despite a report saying Washington is frustrated with the Saudi role in Iraq, as Washington said it was readying a major arms package for Saudi Arabia.

On Friday the White House insisted the two allies are working closely to fight terror even as The New York Times reported that Washington believes the Saudis are trying to undermine the Baghdad government and have failed to stem the flow of volunteers joining the insurgency there.

According to the Times, the Saudis view Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, as an agent of Iran and appear to have stepped up efforts to weaken his government, providing funding for Sunni groups.

While not addressing the Times report specifically, White House spokesperson Dana Perino insisted Friday that Washington and Riyadh are working closely on security issues.

“We have very strong relations on counter-terrorism measures,” Perino said.

Let’s recap: most of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.  The Saudi royal family has been funding Jihadi religious schools for years.  Currently, damn near HALF of the foreigners carrying out attacks in Iraq come from Saudi Arabia.  Yet we’re yelling at Iran & giving the Saudis weapons?

This would be like if I lived in between a neo-Nazi & an annoying yet not imminently dangerous evangelical, and I bought the neo-Nazi a gun after finding my lawn w/ a giant Swastika burnt into it.