Joe Lieberman is giving scum a bad name

Who'd a thunk it? Here is GI Joe calling for "investigation" of media outlets reporting on Wikileaks.

He may be the single most dangerous, irresponsible public figure in America today.

Next he and the neocon war lobby are likely to spin that the release of Wikileaks makes a strike on Iran even more unavoidable than before. Look for George Will, William Kristol, John McCain, John Kyl, Lindsey Graham, et al, to pick up that theme.

If we had had less useless secrecy to begin with, we would be in a far better position today to maintain some kind of moral high ground. The bad guy here is not the guy who caused the truth to be told but the guys who tried to hide the truth and then to hide behind a shield of lies and official privilege.

The investigation we really need is of the neocon project and its stooges in the high-profile media and the Congress.

Is this the beginning of something fundamentally new?

Raw Story has an article here about the US government telling its employees not to read the Wikileaks cables.

Huh? The government gets to tell people what not to read? Is it illegal to read these documents? To read about the documents? To report about the documents?

Absurd. Perverse. Pathetic. Stalinist. Dangerous as hell.

Think about it. These leaks happened in the first place because disillusioned, marginalized, alarmed, and angry government employees decided to do it. How does the ante get upped now?

The government is acting out of pride, panic, and the impulse to retaliate. That is a recipe for catastrophically bad decisions and a loss of authority.

The calculus of government by trust, allegiance, gratitude, consensus and respect is wildly different from the calculus of government by fear, obedience, fiat, suspicion and deception.

These leaks are going to get spun into a reason to clamp down on the Internet, to classify conversation as well as government documents, and to further privilege certain policies as being beyond the scope of public knowledge or approval.

This is another big step down the old Lost Highway of tottering, bankrupt empires trying to hold on with sterner and sterner measures.

This is getting out of hand.

The Wikileaks story goes on. Raw Story has an update that reads like something out of early Saturday Night Live.

The article is here.

This is not what the law is for.

If we have something to fear from the truth...

[Q] Mr. President., I know that you were responsible as President for setting up the CIA. How do you feel about it now?

[A] I think it was a mistake. And if I had known what was going to happen, I never would have done it. I needed...the President needed at that time a central organization that would bring all the various intelligence reports we were getting in those days, and there must have been a dozen of them, maybe more, bring them all into one organization so that the President would get one report on what was going on in various parts of the world.

Now that made sense, and that's why I went ahead and set up what they called the Central Intelligence Agency.

But it got out of hand. The fella...the one that was in the White House after me never paid any attention to it,and it got out of hand. Why, they've got an organization over there in Virginia now that is practically the equal of the Pentagon in many ways. And I think I've told you that one Pentagon is one too many.

Now, as nearly as I can make out, those fellows in the CIA don't just report on wars and the like, they go out and make their own, and there's nobody to keep track of what they're up to. They spend billions of dollars on stirring up trouble so they'll have something to report on. They've become...It's become a government all of its own and all secret. They don't have to account to anybody.

That's a very dangerous thing in a democratic society, and it's got to be put a stop to. The people have got a right to know what those birds are up to. And if I was back in the White House, people would know. You see, the way a free government works, there's got tot be a housecleaning every now and again, and I don't care what branch of the government is involved. Somebody has to keep an eye on things.

And when you can't do any housecleaning because everything that goes on is a damn secret, why, then we're on our way to something the Founding Fathers didn't have in mind. Secrecy and a free, democratic society don't mix. And if what happened at the Bay of Pigs doesn't prove that, I don't know what does.

You have got to keep an eye on the military at all times, and it doesn't matter whether it's the birds in the Pentagon or the birds in the CIA.

From Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman, by Merle Miller.



AS long as there have been governments, the cult of official secrecy has enabled and empowered every form of corruption, sloth, indifference, violence, venality and tyranny.

When America was new, George Washington declaimed against "entangling alliances," in large part because of their deleterious impact on democracy. Ferociously committed to that isolationist principle in the beginning, by slow degrees America abandoned it as she become a world power. By the end of World War II, America and the Soviet Union carved up the management of the world between them, each having more or less a free hand in their own sphere, and each feeling their historical mission justified certain categories of duplicity, deception, manipulation and murder. Like all crimes, crimes of state become easier and more addictive as they are repeated, and by the end of the Cold War America's foreign policy establishment had accumulated an impressive catalogue of sins and atrocities committed in our name, and the habit of lazy self-justification. Here comes Julian Assange, and now the elites profess themselves shocked, shocked, at the content of the Wikileaks memos and the alleged possible repercussions from their release. But even more than the contents of the leaked memos, the over-the-top reaction of the Washington power players to the leak reveals much that they would prefer remain hidden. Eric Holder threatens prosecution, Hillary Clinton huffs and puffs, Barack Obama lets it be known that he is infuriated. and Republican members of Congress wonder why we can't prosecute Wikileaks for treason, terrorism, or aiding and abetting the enemy. And in so doing, they underscore why secrecy is a dagger to the heart of democracy.

The leaks are in themselves, so far, not explosive enough to justify all the rhubarb. We are not talking about launch codes or satellite frequencies here. None of these revelations amount to more than petty court gossip or the sort of informed, perfevered speculation that has been current on talk radio for years now. Among the "highlights" of the revelations:
---The Saudi King favors an attack on Iran's nuclear program;
---China has directed cyberattacks on the United States;
---Russian President Medvedev" plays Robin to Putin's Batman;"
---German Chancellor Angela Merkel "avoids risk and is seldom creative;"
---Iran has bought sophisticated missiles from North Korea -- missiles that can hit Europe;
---Chinese operatives have hacked into computers of governments worldwide, the Dali Lama, and major US Businesses;
---The US and South Korea have discussed contingencies to unify Korea should the state in the North implode, including concessions that may be necessary to China to help them accept a pro-US government in the unified Korea;
---Donors in the Saudi Royal family keep Sunni militants groups, in particular Al Qaeda, active and well-financed;
---The United States has made an effort to remove highly enriched uranium out of Pakistan to protect it from falling into the hands of militants in case of a Pakistani collapse;
--- US diplomats have been directed by superiors to spy on their counterparts and when possible to collect DNA samples.

Taken individually, it is hard to reconcile these out-of-context factoids with any sense of meltdown or even urgency. What is there to worry about? Medvedev's hurt little feelings? Merkel's vanity? Is China going to pout because the suspicion of their crimes has seen the light of day? So what if they do? Most preposterous of all is the matter of US Diplomats involved in professional surveillance of their counterparts; does anyone imagine that the diplomatic world has ever been anything but a hive of the most vicious, assiduous, back-stabbing treachery?

If nation-states are going to let cotton candy like these representations influence calculations of hard national interest, they are too irrational to influence anyway.

No informed citizen 50 miles outside of Washington would express too much surprise at any of this. In fact, not only does the content of this massive leak fall short of the dark suspicions that alienated Americans routinely harbor about their own government, but many ordinary Americans are so used to feeling utterly disconnected from and manipulated by their own government that, from spite, it is almost cheering to see the power structure this agitated and upset.

That level of unhappiness is mainstream, and if the government does not know it, it is because they do not want to know.

So why all the hollering? Who is kidding whom here? What is this Kabuki play intended to accomplish? Why does the orchestrated, theatrical, righteous indignation on the part of our leaders feel like some sort of baroque psywar campaign against American voters?

Noam Chomsky has it right; this sturm und drang of outrage against Wikileaks is about transparency, accountability, and the rule of law in a democracy, and the right of the ruling class and their stooges to run roughshod over the world with impunity and complete deniability, and to ignore the obligation to submit to the law and the supremacy of the people. We're beyond all this transparency stuff, the government is saying; what we do is too important. The roar of protest from Washington is the sound of the Bipartisan Beltway Bubble closing ranks and showing who is in charge. All this outrage is calculated to protect the ensconced sinecures and the well-feathered nests of the Foreign Policy Establishment and their clients from an empowered, enfranchised, informed and righteously angered population, the national interest be damned.

We are at a point where the people operating the government in our name have established a Constitution-free zone for themselves, and in all matters, they have their foreign and domestic agendas which overlap very little with those of the population. And they think that is how things ought to be.

When Richard Nixon learned of the Pentagon Paper's publication in The New York Times, his first reaction was partisan joy, because he know that most of their contents would reflect badly on Kennedy and Johnson. Under prodding from Henry Kissinger, he came to see them for what they were: a threat to the free hand of the secret government of the American Empire to do what it pleased, where it pleased, when it pleased, to whom it pleased. Once convinced of this point of view, witnesses attest, Nixon became a frothing, whirling dervish of rage and revenge, pacing the Oval Office double-time, purple faced and spitting venom, pounding his fist into his palm and muttering over and over: "We CANNOT have foreign policy made on the front page of the New York Times!!!" Among other things, Nixon realized that he could no longer be entirely certain even of the loyalty of the government apparatus. This may well mark the inflection point of the Nixon presidency into paranoia, chaos, and crime.

Like Nixon, today's czars look upon the obligations of a free society as a poor second to the hard-headed imperatives of sophisticated, worldly statecraft. There is no place in this worldview for a public airing of the facts, no possibility of a challenge to authority, no checks and balances. Thus, the multi-trillion dollar, apocalyptic sinkholes of Afghanistan, Iraq, and if we are not careful, Iran.

The real crime that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, et al are concerned about is the crime of crashing the private party of those who have long since hijacked the American government for their own ends and who have implicated all of us in an escalating quagmire of death, poverty, chaos and suffering.

Long ago, the United States of America made a deal with the devil and chose empire. Now the empire strikes back, at us.

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

AP is reporting that Julian Assange is suddenly on Interpol's most wanted list based on a Swedish warrant for a "drawn-out rape probe." The last time this happened was August 10, 2010, about 2 weeks after the release of the Afghan War Diary.

Maybe everyone is acting in good faith. Maybe.

On the other hand, it is an old, obvious trick of corrupt and compromised law enforcement to use the powers of arrest, investigation, subpoena and imprisonment to make troublesome people shut up and go away. Nazi Germany, the Jim Crow South, and the Soviet Union under Stalin notoriously and blatantly used the judicial system to bully dissidents and activists.

If Interpol is capable of this kind of naked police power to harass a whistle blower, we are in more trouble than anyone thinks and we need to get rid of Interpol, and fast. The burden is on them to say it ain't so. Tick tick.

President Obama, mystery man

Sometimes, Presidential rhetoric is about blunt truths, boldly proclaimed. And sometimes, a different approach is best.

FDR said to a campaign audience in 1940 "Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." In that campaign, he famously said "I hate war." To us, it is clear that both times he plainly, obviously, blatantly, was saying the opposite of what he meant and what he wanted; that he knew he was saying the opposite of what he meant and wanted; that he felt a higher good -- his continued service in a war he knew was coming -- gave him licence to misrepresent his thinking like this; that he felt, and he was probably right, that in some byzantine metaphysical crafty way he was, by these very prevarications, helping the country lead itself to the conclusion he had already long since reached. Arguably, among the results of this attitude was Unconditional Surrender on both sides of the world.





Dwight Eisenhower, regarded by most Americans at the time at the distilled essence of the benign, decent and straightforward Ordinary American, was indeed that and, in addition to that, was as shrewd, subtle, ruthless, and cunning a leader and orator as American history has produced. His is not called the Hidden Hand Presidency for nothing. Referring to Ike's routinely circular stream-of-consciousness outbursts at press conferences, Garry Wills writes in Nixon Agonistes:




What, then, is one to make of those famous meanderings at press conferences? They were a proof of Eisenhower's sense of priorities. He was intensely briefed by twenty or thirty staff experts before each press conference. He went into each session with certain things clearly in mind -- things he was determined to say, and the way they should be said; things he was determined not to say, and ways to circle around them. And he got the job done. The rest was fluff and filler -- but fluff under control. Even Hughes, Eisenhower's critic, grants that he "made not one politically significant verbal blunder throughout eight years of press conferences and public addresses."...Eisenhower revealed his conscious strategy in these matters during the tense days of the Quemoy-Matsu crisis. His press secretary, James Hagerty, advised him to take a no-comment stand. " 'Don't worry, Jim,' I told him as we went out the door. 'If that question comes up, I'll just confuse them.' "






The Eisenhower era is defined by this kind of calculated, soothing playacting, and so successful was it that many reputable historians still fall for the canard that Ike's Presidency was one of passivity, of indifference to results, of snoozy self-satisfaction -- almost the opposite of the plain record. John Kennedy based his Presidential campaign on it.

And Kennedy in his Inaugural Address gave an example of the other kind of Presidential leadership. Bluntly, shrilly, and stridently, he proclaimed a new era and a new kind of Total War that trapped the New Frontier, and his successors, in a bloody and expensive box. The famous passage "pay any price, bear any burden, support any friend, oppose any foe" defined his Presidency and left no room for the creative uncertainty, for the calming pause, for the relaxation of tension that can enhance perspective and broaden available prospects and options. That he and his court thought this kind of soaring bellicose rhetoric was in any way useful or constructive is in retrospect an alarming indication of their lack of preparation for high office, and explains much of what followed in Kennedy's conduct -- often reckless, impulsive, and ill-informed -- of foreign policy.




Wednesday night, from West Point, Obama delivered his formal rational for his decision to send some 30,000 more American military personnel to Afghanistan, coupled with an apparently firm 18-month drop dead date. A masterpiece of Presidential half-and-half, the speech left no one really certain what he thinks or is inclined to do. To be fair, it was consistent with his campaign rhetoric. In 2008 he said clearly and prominently that the "real war" was in Afghanistan and that our intervention in Iraq was a distraction as well as wrong and impractical. He believes it, and has in fact substantially drawn down America's footprint in Iraq and committed his Presidency to a complete evacuation by mid-2011. Given what is at stake in Pakistan, it should not be surprising that exiting Afghanistan is a more delicate matter.





Nonetheless, to those Americans like me who long for the day that America will leave Afghanistan and Iraq (not to mention many, many other places)-- thinking it long, long overdue even today -- the decision to send more troops is objectively a serious disappointment and a dismaying, perplexing setback. It is very easy to conclude, in the context of many other seeming compromises of principle, that he simply caved in to personal pressure from demanding Generals. To propose what is in effect a surge when increasing numbers of people in the country and the Congress can barely stomach being there (yesterday a Pew poll reported that 49% of Americans -- the highest number ever -- agree with the statement that "America should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along as best they can") can only provoke the impulse to get out. But while getting out is a great big change from staying there without a surge, it is a bigger change still with a surge.


If, as many anguished liberals are starting to say out loud, Barak Obama is a pushover, a sellout, a compromiser of convenience, a man who cannot bear to tell anyone something that will make them stop smiling; if he has found his comfort zone in a pattern of capitulating to Republicans; if, indeed, he is a man with no convictions stronger than his own narcissism and relentless self-promotion -- and I would be the last to say there is no chance that any of the foregoing is, to one degree or another, true -- then his Presidency is indeed lost, all his supporters have been bitterly betrayed, and the right-wing reaction will be swift in coming and terrible to behold. And of course, that would be bad.



But perhaps things are not really the way they seem on the surface. In the same speech were these words:

As President, I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, our or interests. And I must weigh all of the challenges that our nation faces. I do not have the luxury of committing to just one. Indeed, I am mindful of the words of President Eisenhower, who - in discussing our national security - said, "Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs."

Over the past several years, we have lost that balance, and failed to appreciate the connection between our national security and our economy. In the wake of an economic crisis, too many of our friends and neighbors are out of work and struggle to pay the bills, and too many Americans are worried about the future facing our children. Meanwhile, competition within the global economy has grown more fierce. So we simply cannot afford to ignore the price of these wars.

All told, by the time I took office the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan approached a trillion dollars. Going forward, I am committed to addressing these costs openly and honestly. Our new approach in Afghanistan is likely to cost us roughly 30 billion dollars for the military this year, and I will work closely with Congress to address these costs as we work to bring down our deficit.

But as we end the war in Iraq and transition to Afghan responsibility, we must rebuild our strength here at home. Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military. It underwrites our diplomacy. It taps the potential of our people, and allows investment in new industry. And it will allow us to compete in this century as successfully as we did in the last. That is why our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended - because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own.

Barak Obama has been paying careful attention to the thinking of the nation. The schizophrenic nature of the speech -- melding Bush-esqe boilerplate about the Taliban with the growing anti-interventionist sentiment of the nation -- does not clarify anything about the President's thinking or future intent. But that was not the purpose of the speech. The purpose of the speech was to raise further questions about what the country wants in the future in the way of a foreign policy, and to do so in a fashion that the power centers in Washington cannot ignore. He has dramatically expanded the boundaries of permissible and relevant discussion, and all in the direction of "Come home, America."


Obama is emerging as a master at subtle techniques of discrete leadership. He is quietly and patiently guiding the re-emergence of populist agitation and making the Beltway respect it. He really is going to send the additional troops to Afghanistan, just like Roosevelt really could not prematurely rearm the nation; but as sentiment hardens and reality sets in, public support will identify him as the guy who honestly thought this through along with the nation. That is an enourmous asset to a President who may, after all, have to call for more sacrifice.

George W. Bush believed in the direct, full-frontal assault on questions and problems. And here we are. If Obama listened to his far-left base and pulled out of Afghanistan without sufficient Republican and right-wing cover, and without the certain concurrence of the people, he would be blamed for any and all consequences and the blowback could be bad enough to put the far right in power for a generation. The Democratic base has to wait a little while so Obama can be assured of enough national support that doing the right thing in this case does not, in the end, make Dick Cheney President.

There really are crazies out there who might soon get nukes. How does that translate into this country, of all countries on Earth, doing all the heavy lifting of trying to stop it while nations like China and Russia -- much closer to the danger zone -- sit on the sidelines and feather their nest? If we face dangers from that part of the world, is it not true that the nations there face at least as great a danger? That is the growing attitude of this country, and that is where the momentum is. President Obama has put his finger on the pulse of the nation.

Simple and plain: OUT NOW!!!

At this writing, President Obama has let it be known that his long-anticipated decision about new troop deployments to Afghanistan will be announced shortly after turkey day. As is his wont, he has, for months now, made things look as if he were delaying and dithering, just to allow himself to get out of the way while the pot boils out there in the country and some sort of out-of-Beltway consensus can form. He has followed this same strategy on health care and any number of economic issues, and it may very well in the end prove to work to his advantage. Obama has the most sophisticated and sensitive political antennae of anyone in Washington today and probably of any President going back to FDR. He is well aware the the country is looking inward, that the country regards every dime spent overseas as a dime not spent in Oakland or Boise or Peoria, that after eight years the end of the country's patience is well and truly in sight. And of course, he knows the arguments for staying and escalating. Many of those arguments are no doubt powerful and compelling. Nonetheless, if he escalates, without at the same time making some kind of irrevocable moves towards getting out, he will make a fatal mistake both for his Presidency and for the country.

There is no good choice but for America to get out, and get out now. What we are doing is plainly no good for anyone but overpaid pirate contractors and corrupt Afghans. All the cautionary horror stories of the consequences of a rash pullout -- that the region will be destabilized; that the Afghan nation will fail and fall into the hands of tyrants and genociders; that jihadis worldwide will be emboldened -- are valid(to the extent that they are true) whether we are there or not. The only difference is that if we are gone, we won't be not dying and paying to be there. If could influence events to our liking, we would surely have done so by now.

Does anybody have a satisfactory answer as to what we are doing there? Looking for Osama? Killing Taliban? Making a perfect nation in our image? If we don't have a clear idea of what our mission is -- and we do not -- we have absolutely no business being there. And certainly no reason to spend the money we are spending.

World War II ended in 1945, and our troops are still all over Europe. The Korean War ended in 1953, and we are still there. Is there any doubt that in the event of victory in Afghanistan or Iraq, our troops would be there for sixty, seventy, eighty years or more? Other than inertia, what the hell is going on? Why do always have money for this, but not for health care, student loans, or basic research? What are we doing, trying to be the world's cop? Are we trying to make the world safe for itself? How did the world get along without us? Who do we think is going to lend us the money to keep traipsing about to make things perfect? Are we insane? Suicidal? Psychotic?

This is increasingly the majority view in this country and Obama and every Member of Congress all know it. There is so little public support for our foreign adventures that it is almost politically dangerous to even bring the subject up for discussion.

The Soviet Union and Britain learned the hard way about overextending empire in Afghanistan. So are we. No amount of earnest study and careful thought will change the basic fact: they live there, and we don't. Kinda like Vietnam. It cannot reduce from that.

This is an opportunity for Obama to become the American Gorbachev. A principled and orderly withdrawal could provide a prelude to American Glasnost and Perestroika. Perhaps that is wishful thinking, but this much is certain: the end of the money is in sight, and no money, no adventures.

Most empires in history have ended when they ran out of money or military capacity. If we chose to walk away from an entanglement before we are chased off an Embassy rooftop, grasping at the legs of a helicopter, we will have done ourselves and the world a great favor.

Here is hoping.....

This may be wrong. I hope not

Two related news stories today look like signals from the White House. Raw Story reported that Colin Powell advised Obama to "take his time" on sending more troops to Afghanistan. There was also a leak of a memo from the US ambassador to Afghanistan strongly advising against sending more troops. As I say I may be wrong, but this looks to me a lot like Obama preparing the country for a decision to tell the Generals no and not send any more troops. We will see.....