Leading Political, Legal Blogger Glenn Greenwald on Afghanistan, State Secrets, Healthcare and the Media
GLENN GREENWALD: ....I think the real question, though, is, the White House claims in public now that the President favors a public option. There have been lots of reports that, in private, they’ve been working against a public option, urging the senators not to include it in the package, that their deals with the healthcare industry is that there would be no public option. So, now one can only speculate about what the reality is, but I think now the question is, you know, they’ve proven in the past that they’re willing to apply heavy pressure tactics on members of Congress. They applied all kinds of threats against House progressives who didn’t want to vote for the war supplemental bill to force them to do so and support the President.AMY GOODMAN: How?GLENN GREENWALD: Well, according to Lynn Woolsey, who is the chair of the House Progressive Caucus, Rahm Emanuel and other White House political officials were calling House freshmen and saying, “If you don’t vote for the war supplemental bill,” that included the IMF money that the President had promised and the war in Afghanistan and Iraq funding, “you will never hear from us again,” meaning you will have to run for reelection without any support from the President or the Democratic Party infrastructure, which is an enormous threat to make for any member of Congress.So, you know, and the Republicans found a way, in 2004, when Arlen Specter had threatened, as Senate Judiciary Committee chair, to block the President’s Supreme Court nominees, if they thought—if he thought they were going to overturn Roe v. Wade, to humiliate him by saying, “You will not have this chairmanship unless you vow in advance to allow these nominations to go forward.” So parties can apply all sorts of pressure on members of Congress who are being recalcitrant, if they’re actually serious about doing so.And so, now the question is, will they apply that kind of pressure to Joe Lieberman and prove that they—that this talk about the President favoring a public option isn’t just lip service to placate the progressive base? Or will they use the senatorial courtesy to say, well, look, there’s nothing we can do about Joe Lieberman, just like they did during the Bush years when it came time to oppose the war in Iraq and other issues?JUAN GONZALEZ: And speaking of that lip service to placate the progressive base, you’ve also shown a light on the debate among the progressive publications over this issue of how serious the Obama administration is about the public option, in the battles between Daily Kos, on the one hand, and the Huffington Post and The Nation. Could you talk about how this is affecting the progressive media?GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I think one of the most significant issues of the Obama administration has been what role progressives—the progressive infrastructure has played in applying pressure on the Obama administration. One of the very first things that the Obama administration did—and Rahm Emanuel has specialized in trying to control and silence the left; I mean, that’s how he built his power base—in the House of Representatives was, they created these weekly meetings called Unity ’09 and Common Purpose, where members of all of the allegedly progressive groups devoted to progressive causes meet every week on Tuesday, often with members of the White House communications team, including oftentimes Rahm Emanuel, and they coordinate their messaging. So, instead of being devoted to, for example, pressuring the administration on issues relating to labor or to choice or to gay issues or to war, instead they’re coordinating their messaging to insure that their real allegiance is to serve the interest and the agenda of the Obama administration. And it’s really enabled the Obama administration to annex large aspects of the progressive infrastructure and to remove what ought to be an important pressure point.I think they’ve done the same with lots of progressive pundits, who aren’t necessarily attending these meetings, but who have voluntarily ceded their role in the progressive world and in progressive opinion making and activism. And you see this conflict more and more, I think. For example, the Huffington Post had an article critical of the Obama administration, reporting, for example, that they were working behind the scenes, in contrast to what Obama was saying, to sabotage the public option. And you saw in various places, on Daily Kos and others, suddenly declarations that the Huffington Post was suspect, and they were right wing, and they were the enemy, because anyone who reflects negatively on Obama has to be discredited. And I think you see that conflict, and I hope it will continue to grow, because it’s healthier than having progressives devote themselves to cheerleading for the President.AMY GOODMAN: But explain why they’re against the public option, the Obama administration. The Obama administration, who—well, Obama was for single payer for years, and we have all the video that we keep playing of him endorsing it.GLENN GREENWALD: Well, one of the interesting—most interesting aspects of what has happened here—and I think it illustrates the point I was just making—is, when Obama was running for president, he not only vowed, in general, to have the most transparent administration ever, talked about how secrecy was the toxin of Washington, but specifically with regard to the healthcare debate, he said the problem has always been in the past, that all the stakeholders get in the meetings, and they get accommodated, and nobody knows what’s actually happening, because it’s all done in secret. And he vowed that healthcare negotiations that he’s involved in, not only wouldn’t they be conducted in secret, they would be put on C-SPAN. Instead, as it turned out, the White House, early on in this process, beginning in March and April, were meeting with pharmaceutical and healthcare industry representatives and reaching secret deals with them to insure that they would not sabotage the healthcare plan.And they made two deals, one with the pharmaceutical industry, not to negotiate for bulk prices, to pay full prices, even though they’re going to be the largest purchaser of pharmaceutical products; and one with the healthcare industry, not to have a public option to compete with what it was that they would be able to charge. So, essentially, they would force and mandate healthy, young Americans to buy the products of the insurance company without providing a public option to keep costs low. It was a huge gift to the healthcare industry. And I think one reason was they were afraid that the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry would advertise against the program. But I think the more important concern is, right now, most healthcare money and pharmaceutical money goes to the Democrats—it went to the Obama campaign, it went to help Democrats take over control of the Congress—and they want that to continue. They don’t want that money to go to Republican coffers to take over the Congress in 2010. And so, one of their principal priorities was to make sure that whatever happened was not a threat to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry. And that’s why, I think, that early on they bargained the public option away.JUAN GONZALEZ: And yet, there was no big furor among—in the progressive circles, as there was, for instance, when Dick Cheney had all his private meetings to develop energy policy at the beginning of the Bush administration, over the failure of Obama to come through with his promise of a more open and public process on healthcare reform.GLENN GREENWALD: Right. And, in fact, one of the principal controversies of the Bush-Cheney administration prior to 9/11, as you just alluded to, was the fact that they refused to disclose the energy executives with whom they were meeting to formulate energy policy. And they invoked all kinds of claims about how White House visitor logs were not part of presidential records. They were outside of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act, and therefore not disclosable or obtainable. And that created a huge furor among progressives that this was a horribly secret administration.And yet, when it came time to obtain those lists from the Obama White House of the healthcare executives with whom they were meeting, they originally invoked that same theory and said, “We’re not going to disclose it.” And eventually they disclosed part of it. But I think you’re right. This is a case where there was a specific promise to have these healthcare negotiations out in the open; there was an exact opposite of that occurring, and very little furor.
"The inability to invest in healthcare, energy and infrastructure etc. in the current state of the economy" is a creation of Washington think tanks (the people paid to think by the makers of tanks - Naomi Klein). Cut the defense budget and fund everything else.
Smart Defense - Katrina Vanden Heuvel on 11/18/2008
Last month, Congressman Barney Frank called for a 25 percent cut in the defense budget--approximately $150 billion in annual spending--saying, "We don't need all these fancy new weapons. I think there needs to be additional review."..Even a senior Pentagon advisory group--the Defense Business Board --recently concluded that the current budget is "not sustainable."....Progressives are under no illusions as to the obstacles to making a real and meaningful shift in the way the US approaches the defense budget.. The Bush Administration's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said of the scant resources devoted to the diplomatic corps as compared to military equipment, "Diplomacy simply does not have the built-in, domestic constituency of defense programs."..
Last month, Congressman Barney Frank called for a 25 percent cut in the defense budget--approximately $150 billion in annual spending--saying, "We don't need all these fancy new weapons. I think there needs to be additional review."..Even a senior Pentagon advisory group--the Defense Business Board --recently concluded that the current budget is "not sustainable."..
..Progressives are under no illusions as to the obstacles to making a real and meaningful shift in the way the US approaches the defense budget.. The Bush Administration's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said of the scant resources devoted to the diplomatic corps as compared to military equipment, "Diplomacy simply does not have the built-in, domestic constituency of defense programs."..
Wars, Weapons, and Warnings - Plutonium Page on 11/9/2008
..The Obama transition team, according to a briefing paper prepared for the campaign's national security advisory team, may consider cuts to high-profile weapon systems, the paper states, naming three: national missile defense, the Airborne Laser and the Army's Future Combat Systems program..
In Praise of a Rocky Transition
by Naomi Klein - Nov 13 2008
..Despite all of this potential lawlessness, the Democrats are either openly defending the administration or refusing to intervene....I suspect that the real reason the Democrats are so far failing to act has less to do with presidential protocol than with fear: fear that the stock market, which has the temperament of an overindulged 2-year-old, will throw one of its world-shaking tantrums...."The Street" would cheer a Summers appointment for exactly the same reason the rest of us should fear it: because traders will assume that Summers, champion of financial deregulation under Clinton, will offer a transition from Henry Paulson so smooth we will barely know it happened. Someone like FDIC chair Sheila Bair, on the other hand, would spark fear on the Street--for all the right reasons....There is no way to reconcile the public's vote for change with the market's foot-stomping for more of the same. Any and all moves to change course will be met with short-term market shocks....When transferring power from a functional, trustworthy regime, everyone favors a smooth transition. When exiting an era marked by criminality and bankrupt ideology, a little rockiness at the start would be a very good sign.
..Despite all of this potential lawlessness, the Democrats are either openly defending the administration or refusing to intervene..
..I suspect that the real reason the Democrats are so far failing to act has less to do with presidential protocol than with fear: fear that the stock market, which has the temperament of an overindulged 2-year-old, will throw one of its world-shaking tantrums..
.."The Street" would cheer a Summers appointment for exactly the same reason the rest of us should fear it: because traders will assume that Summers, champion of financial deregulation under Clinton, will offer a transition from Henry Paulson so smooth we will barely know it happened. Someone like FDIC chair Sheila Bair, on the other hand, would spark fear on the Street--for all the right reasons..
..There is no way to reconcile the public's vote for change with the market's foot-stomping for more of the same. Any and all moves to change course will be met with short-term market shocks..
..When transferring power from a functional, trustworthy regime, everyone favors a smooth transition. When exiting an era marked by criminality and bankrupt ideology, a little rockiness at the start would be a very good sign.
To change the future, know the history.. I'm glad people like Bill Ayers got a voice now (never mind the reasons). Though Obama can't fight for them, their voice in the media by itself is a great benefit to our democracy.
Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn on the Weather Underground, the McCain Campaign Attacks, President-Elect Obama and the Antiwar Movement Today - Part 1 (Nov 14 2008)
In the late stages of the presidential race, no other name was used more by the McCain-Palin campaign against Barack Obama than Bill Ayers. Ayers is a respected Chicago professor who was a member of the 1960s militant antiwar group the Weather Underground. In their first joint television interview, Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn discuss the McCain campaign attacks, President-elect Obama, the Weather Underground, the legacy of 1960s social justice movements, and more.
I don't think Obama by himself can keep his promise of an open government. Are the people ready to step up to their non-election citizen responsibilities, demand stuff, and keep pushing him in the right direction so his job gets easier?
Barack on the future of this movement
April 30 2008
"One of the things that I'm really proud about this campaign, is that we've built a structure that can sustain itself after the campaign. It was because of volunteers, they built the campaign. We didn't originally have big plans for Idaho, but people made this structure.. ..I want to open up transparency in government, so that you guys know what is happening. I want to revamp our White House website.. I want people to be able to know, ..today President Obama talked about his proposal for $4000 student college tuition credits, it's going to be going into this congressional committee, these are the key leaders in the House and Senate that are going to be deciding on the bill, here are the groups that are involved that are supporting it, you should contact your Congressman. Just creating the situation that if people want to get involved, it's easy..That's how we are going to counteract the special interests."
Obama and the Future of US Foreign Policy: A Discussion
Democracy Now! Nov 06 2008
John Pilger: ..Michael Moore had it right when he said the other day, let’s hope that Obama breaks all his election promises, as politicians generally do, because all his election promises, in terms of foreign policy, are a continuation of business as usual. And even if there is a return to what used to be called a multilateral world, I think there has to be critical analysis of the return to the pretensions of America as a peacemaker around the world. We had to endure this, and I mean endure it during the Clinton years, and I don’t think that we, in the rest of the world, ought to have to endure it now through the Obama years, so that we have a continuation, if you like, of liberalism as a divisive, almost war-making ideology, being used to destroy liberalism as a reality, because that has gone on under so-called liberal presidents, from Kennedy to Clinton, Democratic presidents. And President-elect Obama suggests to us, in his promises, that he is going to continue that, bombing Pakistan and Afghanistan..Mahmood Mamdani: ..Will America recognize, as I believe South Africa has after the election of Mandela, that the election of Mandela was not change, but an opportunity to change? And whether that opportunity is realized and transformed into a program of social justice within the country and peace abroad will depend on the movement that pushes Obama and gives him the opportunity to respond to it..Ali Abunimah: ..we should be setting the standard very high, not accepting slight hints that in a few years’ time an Obama administration might accept a Palestinian state or might talk about one. The days for that are over. The situation is urgent, and we really need to see radical change. It’s not going to come from Rahm Emanuel and Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk; it’s only going to come from a groundswell demanding that the promises of change be kept..Tariq Ali: ..I mean, the British are already saying that sending in more troops isn’t going to help, because the war is lost. The United States intelligence agencies are already involved in panic discussions with the people they are fighting, the neo-Taliban, to try and persuade them to join the coalition, which they’re refusing to do as long as there are foreign troops there. So, escalating the war I don’t think is a serious option. And if he does it, it will be a very, very serious mistake, on the same level in scale as invading Iraq..Mahmood Mamdani: ..there’s a remarkable difference between the youth movement of the ’60s, which mainly organized outside the system, and the youth movement which has brought Obama to power, because this movement has organized within the system to reform the system. Obama keeps on saying that this movement must not go away, that change hasn’t come, that this is the beginning of change. Now, will the candidate be able to tame the movement, or will the movement be able to stamp itself to some extent in the coming days?
John Pilger: ..Michael Moore had it right when he said the other day, let’s hope that Obama breaks all his election promises, as politicians generally do, because all his election promises, in terms of foreign policy, are a continuation of business as usual. And even if there is a return to what used to be called a multilateral world, I think there has to be critical analysis of the return to the pretensions of America as a peacemaker around the world. We had to endure this, and I mean endure it during the Clinton years, and I don’t think that we, in the rest of the world, ought to have to endure it now through the Obama years, so that we have a continuation, if you like, of liberalism as a divisive, almost war-making ideology, being used to destroy liberalism as a reality, because that has gone on under so-called liberal presidents, from Kennedy to Clinton, Democratic presidents. And President-elect Obama suggests to us, in his promises, that he is going to continue that, bombing Pakistan and Afghanistan..
Mahmood Mamdani: ..Will America recognize, as I believe South Africa has after the election of Mandela, that the election of Mandela was not change, but an opportunity to change? And whether that opportunity is realized and transformed into a program of social justice within the country and peace abroad will depend on the movement that pushes Obama and gives him the opportunity to respond to it..
Ali Abunimah: ..we should be setting the standard very high, not accepting slight hints that in a few years’ time an Obama administration might accept a Palestinian state or might talk about one. The days for that are over. The situation is urgent, and we really need to see radical change. It’s not going to come from Rahm Emanuel and Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk; it’s only going to come from a groundswell demanding that the promises of change be kept..
Tariq Ali: ..I mean, the British are already saying that sending in more troops isn’t going to help, because the war is lost. The United States intelligence agencies are already involved in panic discussions with the people they are fighting, the neo-Taliban, to try and persuade them to join the coalition, which they’re refusing to do as long as there are foreign troops there. So, escalating the war I don’t think is a serious option. And if he does it, it will be a very, very serious mistake, on the same level in scale as invading Iraq..
Mahmood Mamdani: ..there’s a remarkable difference between the youth movement of the ’60s, which mainly organized outside the system, and the youth movement which has brought Obama to power, because this movement has organized within the system to reform the system. Obama keeps on saying that this movement must not go away, that change hasn’t come, that this is the beginning of change. Now, will the candidate be able to tame the movement, or will the movement be able to stamp itself to some extent in the coming days?
Senator Obama,
Former treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin is one of the most prominent contributors to the deregulation causing the current economic crisis. When you talk about getting to the root of the problem, you have a responsibility not to depend on the extreme ideologues who brought this on us in the first place. Please fire him from your campaign, and pledge to exclude corporate lobbyists from the federal intervention in the markets, and all other government business.
Taking Hard New Look at a Greenspan LegacyPeter S Goodman Oct 8 2008"..Ms. Born’s views incited fierce opposition from Mr. Greenspan and Robert E. Rubin, the Treasury secretary then. Treasury lawyers concluded that merely discussing new rules threatened the derivatives market. Mr. Greenspan warned that too many rules would damage Wall Street, prompting traders to take their business overseas.." "..On June 5, 1998, Mr. Greenspan, Mr. Rubin and Mr. Levitt called on Congress to prevent Ms. Born from acting until more senior regulators developed their own recommendations. Mr. Levitt says he now regrets that decision. Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Rubin were “joined at the hip on this,” he said. “They were certainly very fiercely opposed to this and persuaded me that this would cause chaos.”Ms. Born soon gained a potent example. In the fall of 1998, the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management nearly collapsed, dragged down by disastrous bets on, among other things, derivatives. More than a dozen banks pooled $3.6 billion for a private rescue to prevent the fund from slipping into bankruptcy and endangering other firms. Despite that event, Congress froze the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s regulatory authority for six months. The following year, Ms. Born departed.."
Taking Hard New Look at a Greenspan Legacy
Peter S Goodman Oct 8 2008
"..Ms. Born’s views incited fierce opposition from Mr. Greenspan and Robert E. Rubin, the Treasury secretary then. Treasury lawyers concluded that merely discussing new rules threatened the derivatives market. Mr. Greenspan warned that too many rules would damage Wall Street, prompting traders to take their business overseas.."
"..On June 5, 1998, Mr. Greenspan, Mr. Rubin and Mr. Levitt called on Congress to prevent Ms. Born from acting until more senior regulators developed their own recommendations. Mr. Levitt says he now regrets that decision. Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Rubin were “joined at the hip on this,” he said. “They were certainly very fiercely opposed to this and persuaded me that this would cause chaos.”
Ms. Born soon gained a potent example. In the fall of 1998, the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management nearly collapsed, dragged down by disastrous bets on, among other things, derivatives. More than a dozen banks pooled $3.6 billion for a private rescue to prevent the fund from slipping into bankruptcy and endangering other firms. Despite that event, Congress froze the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s regulatory authority for six months. The following year, Ms. Born departed.."
Why is early voting opportunity in king county not publicized? I just drove down to election office in Renton and voted - the place is empty because - nobody knows you can vote now.http://www.kingcounty.gov/elections/voting/earlyvoting.aspx
Vote now - and do something better on November 4th - "Get Out The Vote"
The Idiots Who Rule America
By Chris Hedges - Oct 20 2008
Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality. We still believe in “the experts.” They still believe in themselves. They are clustered like flies swarming around John McCain and Barack Obama. It is only when these elites are exposed as incompetent parasites and dethroned that we will have any hope of restoring social, economic and political order....Our elites—the ones in Congress, the ones on Wall Street and the ones being produced at prestigious universities and business schools—do not have the capacity to fix our financial mess. Indeed, they will make it worse. They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of the common good. They are stunted, timid and uncreative bureaucrats who are trained to carry out systems management. They see only piecemeal solutions which will satisfy the corporate structure. They are about numbers, profits and personal advancement. They are as able to deny gravely ill people medical coverage to increase company profits as they are able to use taxpayer dollars to peddle costly weapons systems to blood-soaked dictatorships. The human consequences never figure into their balance sheets. The democratic system, they think, is a secondary product of the free market. And they slavishly serve the market....We may elect representatives to Congress to end the war in Iraq, but the war goes on. We may plead with these representatives to halt Bush’s illegal wiretapping but the telecommunications lobbyists make sure it remains in place. We may beg them not to pass the bailout but 850 billion taxpayer dollars are funneled upward to the elites on Wall Street. We may want single-payer, not-for-profit health care but it is not even discussed as a possibility in presidential debates. We, as individuals in this system, are irrelevant....I do not think George W. Bush or Barack Obama or John McCain or Henry Paulson are fascists. Rather, they are part of a cabal of naive, mediocre and self-deluded capitalists who are steadily weakening political and economic structures to a point where our democracy will become so impotent that it can be blown aside, probably with broad popular support. The only question is how this will happen. Will there be a steady and slow decline as in the late Roman Empire when the Senate ended as a farce? Will we see a powerful right-wing backlash from those outside the mainstream political system, as we did in Yugoslavia, and the rise of a militant Christian fascism? Will there be a national crisis that allows those in power to instantly sweep away all constitutional rights in the name of national security?
Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality. We still believe in “the experts.” They still believe in themselves. They are clustered like flies swarming around John McCain and Barack Obama. It is only when these elites are exposed as incompetent parasites and dethroned that we will have any hope of restoring social, economic and political order..
..Our elites—the ones in Congress, the ones on Wall Street and the ones being produced at prestigious universities and business schools—do not have the capacity to fix our financial mess. Indeed, they will make it worse. They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of the common good. They are stunted, timid and uncreative bureaucrats who are trained to carry out systems management. They see only piecemeal solutions which will satisfy the corporate structure. They are about numbers, profits and personal advancement. They are as able to deny gravely ill people medical coverage to increase company profits as they are able to use taxpayer dollars to peddle costly weapons systems to blood-soaked dictatorships. The human consequences never figure into their balance sheets. The democratic system, they think, is a secondary product of the free market. And they slavishly serve the market..
..We may elect representatives to Congress to end the war in Iraq, but the war goes on. We may plead with these representatives to halt Bush’s illegal wiretapping but the telecommunications lobbyists make sure it remains in place. We may beg them not to pass the bailout but 850 billion taxpayer dollars are funneled upward to the elites on Wall Street. We may want single-payer, not-for-profit health care but it is not even discussed as a possibility in presidential debates. We, as individuals in this system, are irrelevant..
..I do not think George W. Bush or Barack Obama or John McCain or Henry Paulson are fascists. Rather, they are part of a cabal of naive, mediocre and self-deluded capitalists who are steadily weakening political and economic structures to a point where our democracy will become so impotent that it can be blown aside, probably with broad popular support. The only question is how this will happen. Will there be a steady and slow decline as in the late Roman Empire when the Senate ended as a farce? Will we see a powerful right-wing backlash from those outside the mainstream political system, as we did in Yugoslavia, and the rise of a militant Christian fascism? Will there be a national crisis that allows those in power to instantly sweep away all constitutional rights in the name of national security?
Pundits side with Wall Street over Main StreetRobert Scheer - October 1, 2008
"..Those Republicans who dared to vote, this time, against the demands of the Wall Street power brokers were derided by New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks as the "Revolt of the Nihilists." While suddenly embracing President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal as the positive alternative to nihilist behavior, Brooks ignored Roosevelt's main achievement, which was to put the public interest before that of the Wall Street titans.Wasn't it nihilistic when Congress, led by Republicans but supported by key Democrats, including then-President Bill Clinton, shredded the protections put into place by Roosevelt to control an ever-avaricious banking industry?....Obama should stick with the wisdom of a community organizer from the tough side of Chicago: fight the bankers who swindle unsuspecting homeowners, and restore the bailout provision that Democratic leaders had proposed but then abandoned - stop the home foreclosures by empowering bankruptcy court judges to force a renegotiation of terms. Any bailout worthy of support should put the endangered homeowner first, not the bankers who swindled them.
"..Those Republicans who dared to vote, this time, against the demands of the Wall Street power brokers were derided by New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks as the "Revolt of the Nihilists." While suddenly embracing President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal as the positive alternative to nihilist behavior, Brooks ignored Roosevelt's main achievement, which was to put the public interest before that of the Wall Street titans.
Wasn't it nihilistic when Congress, led by Republicans but supported by key Democrats, including then-President Bill Clinton, shredded the protections put into place by Roosevelt to control an ever-avaricious banking industry?..
..Obama should stick with the wisdom of a community organizer from the tough side of Chicago: fight the bankers who swindle unsuspecting homeowners, and restore the bailout provision that Democratic leaders had proposed but then abandoned - stop the home foreclosures by empowering bankruptcy court judges to force a renegotiation of terms.
Any bailout worthy of support should put the endangered homeowner first, not the bankers who swindled them.
Katie Couric Interviews Sarah Palin About Watching Russia, Her New Passport And Her Opinion Of Obama
Sep 25 2008
..On whether the $700 billion bailout of the U.S. financial sector is a good idea.
.."That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Helping the—it’s got to be all about job creation too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans and trade—we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as competitive, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today—we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity.."
Remember these legendary words on maps & education?
Losing AfghanistanProlonging this good war may be worse than persisting in the bad one in Iraq.By Leon Hadar - July 28 2008, The American Conservative
..First, we need to remember that the outside military and financial backers of the Taliban and by extension of al-Qaeda—the only governments to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government in Kabul—were our staunch allies Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates....We formed an ad hoc partnership with the Northern Alliance, providing them money and arms while at the same time pressuring the Pakistanis and the Saudis to end their support for groups responsible for the deaths of 3,000 innocent Americans. This was an example of a sensible Realpolitik policy—co-operating with a mixed bag of local and regional players to capture our enemies and destroy their military infrastructure. An ideological crusade to bring democracy to Afghanistan wasn’t part of the plan. Pursuing the same kind of realistic approach, we could have encouraged the remnants of the Northern Alliance to work with their regional backers to co-opt Pakistan and members of Afghanistan’s Pashtun majority into an imperfect political settlement. This, in turn, would probably have led to the creation of a loose confederation of ethnic groups, locally controlled and secured by backing from Russia, India, Turkey, Iran—and Pakistan and the United States. Instead, we insisted on imposing our man, the Pashtun Hamid Karzai, as head of a central government....Iraq and Afghanistan skeptics recognize that both countries are involved in civil wars, with tribal forces fighting over territory and resources in order to preserve their power and identity. Their political, economic, and religious interests don’t necessarily correspond to or conflict with American interests. After all, in Afghanistan, Pakistan backed al-Qaeda and Iran supported the Northern Alliance. In Iraq, the U.S. has partnered with a Shi’ite movement with ties to Iran....One hopes that Obama and company will resolve their cognitive dissonance by modifying their belief about the moral benefit and policy utility of nation-building. Indeed, the new administration should abandon these fantasies and instead embrace a realist policy of working with regional powers to secure the limited but actual U.S. interests in Afghanistan and the rest of South and Central Asia—weakening the influence of radical Islam; damaging the infrastructure of terrorist groups; preventing unstable regimes and terrorist organizations from gaining access to weapons of mass destruction..
..First, we need to remember that the outside military and financial backers of the Taliban and by extension of al-Qaeda—the only governments to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government in Kabul—were our staunch allies Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates..
Pursuing the same kind of realistic approach, we could have encouraged the remnants of the Northern Alliance to work with their regional backers to co-opt Pakistan and members of Afghanistan’s Pashtun majority into an imperfect political settlement. This, in turn, would probably have led to the creation of a loose confederation of ethnic groups, locally controlled and secured by backing from Russia, India, Turkey, Iran—and Pakistan and the United States. Instead, we insisted on imposing our man, the Pashtun Hamid Karzai, as head of a central government..
..Iraq and Afghanistan skeptics recognize that both countries are involved in civil wars, with tribal forces fighting over territory and resources in order to preserve their power and identity. Their political, economic, and religious interests don’t necessarily correspond to or conflict with American interests. After all, in Afghanistan, Pakistan backed al-Qaeda and Iran supported the Northern Alliance. In Iraq, the U.S. has partnered with a Shi’ite movement with ties to Iran..
..One hopes that Obama and company will resolve their cognitive dissonance by modifying their belief about the moral benefit and policy utility of nation-building. Indeed, the new administration should abandon these fantasies and instead embrace a realist policy of working with regional powers to secure the limited but actual U.S. interests in Afghanistan and the rest of South and Central Asia—weakening the influence of radical Islam; damaging the infrastructure of terrorist groups; preventing unstable regimes and terrorist organizations from gaining access to weapons of mass destruction..
New Orleans: The City That Won't Be IgnoredBy Naomi Klein - September 3, 2008
..Gustav should have been political rat poison for the Republicans, no matter how well it was managed. Yet, as Peter Baker noted in the New York Times, "rather than run away from the hurricane and its political risks, Mr. McCain ran toward it." If this strategy worked, it was at least partly because Barack Obama has been running away from New Orleans for his entire campaign....There are plenty of political reasons for this, of course. Obama's campaign is pitching itself to the middle class, not the class of discarded people New Orleans represents. The problem is that by remaining virtually silent about the most dramatic domestic outrage in modern US history, Obama created a political vacuum. When Gustav hit, all McCain needed to do to fill it was show up....It was also the time to recall that during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the official Minerals Management Service report found more than 100 accidents leading to a total of 743,400 gallons of oil spilled throughout the region. To put that figure in perspective, 100,000 gallons is classified as a "major spill.".. ..Obama was not able to make these kinds of arguments when Gustav hit. That's because his campaign had made another "strategic" decision: to compromise on offshore oil drilling. Again a vacuum that had been opened up was rapidly filled by the Republicans, who instantly (and absurdly) linked the hurricane to the need for "energy security."....In moments of crisis, it is possible to speak hard truths with great force and clarity. But when the truth has gone silent, lies, boldly told, work almost as well.
..Gustav should have been political rat poison for the Republicans, no matter how well it was managed. Yet, as Peter Baker noted in the New York Times, "rather than run away from the hurricane and its political risks, Mr. McCain ran toward it." If this strategy worked, it was at least partly because Barack Obama has been running away from New Orleans for his entire campaign..
..There are plenty of political reasons for this, of course. Obama's campaign is pitching itself to the middle class, not the class of discarded people New Orleans represents. The problem is that by remaining virtually silent about the most dramatic domestic outrage in modern US history, Obama created a political vacuum. When Gustav hit, all McCain needed to do to fill it was show up..
..It was also the time to recall that during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the official Minerals Management Service report found more than 100 accidents leading to a total of 743,400 gallons of oil spilled throughout the region. To put that figure in perspective, 100,000 gallons is classified as a "major spill.".. ..Obama was not able to make these kinds of arguments when Gustav hit. That's because his campaign had made another "strategic" decision: to compromise on offshore oil drilling. Again a vacuum that had been opened up was rapidly filled by the Republicans, who instantly (and absurdly) linked the hurricane to the need for "energy security."..
..In moments of crisis, it is possible to speak hard truths with great force and clarity. But when the truth has gone silent, lies, boldly told, work almost as well.
A Clintonite in DenverBy Howard Wolfson - Monday, September 1, 2008
For many of us who were part of the Clinton campaign, Sen. Barack Obama's appeal was something we understood only in the abstract -- data in polls, faces at a televised rally. Most of us never heard him speak in person. At work 14 hours a day in the war room, we focused on his perceived faults and deficiencies. Our time was spent sharpening and advancing arguments. Skepticism was critical to our efforts..Many of us arrived in Denver reluctantly, feeling like uninvited guests at someone else's party. What the media described as division felt more like defeat. Michelle Obama and both Hillary and Bill Clinton did their part to change that during the Democratic National Convention's first days. Their speeches struck the right tones of unity, softening hearts made hard by months of fighting and appealing to our common values as Democrats and Americans. Then came Thursday night at Invesco Field. During the campaign, we scoffed at events like this, mostly because we were not capable of producing them..In person, my attention undivided, I saw something of what so many others had seen for so long. Progress in America is never cheap, and even today history exacts a price for Obama's victory -- the dreams of electing the first female president, the dreams of so many who rushed toward Hillary Clinton on rope lines across America and refused to give up her hand and their hopes. Today these dreams are giving way to another kind of progress. For me, the presidential campaign began in a crowded Iowa hall, where I saw a man my age lift up a daughter around my daughter's age and tell her that one day she could be president. Last week things came nearly full circle, when I saw another man my age lift up another child and say the very same thing.
For many of us who were part of the Clinton campaign, Sen. Barack Obama's appeal was something we understood only in the abstract -- data in polls, faces at a televised rally. Most of us never heard him speak in person. At work 14 hours a day in the war room, we focused on his perceived faults and deficiencies. Our time was spent sharpening and advancing arguments. Skepticism was critical to our efforts..
Many of us arrived in Denver reluctantly, feeling like uninvited guests at someone else's party. What the media described as division felt more like defeat. Michelle Obama and both Hillary and Bill Clinton did their part to change that during the Democratic National Convention's first days. Their speeches struck the right tones of unity, softening hearts made hard by months of fighting and appealing to our common values as Democrats and Americans. Then came Thursday night at Invesco Field. During the campaign, we scoffed at events like this, mostly because we were not capable of producing them..
In person, my attention undivided, I saw something of what so many others had seen for so long. Progress in America is never cheap, and even today history exacts a price for Obama's victory -- the dreams of electing the first female president, the dreams of so many who rushed toward Hillary Clinton on rope lines across America and refused to give up her hand and their hopes. Today these dreams are giving way to another kind of progress.
For me, the presidential campaign began in a crowded Iowa hall, where I saw a man my age lift up a daughter around my daughter's age and tell her that one day she could be president. Last week things came nearly full circle, when I saw another man my age lift up another child and say the very same thing.
Obama Outwits the BloviatorsBy FRANK RICH, August 30, 2008
..No major Obama speech — each breathlessly hyped in advance as do-or-die and as the “the most important of his career” — has been a disaster; most have been triples or home runs, if not grand slams. What is most surprising is how astonished the press still is at each Groundhog Day’s replay of the identical outcome. Indeed, the disconnect between the reality of this campaign and how it is perceived and presented by the mainstream media is now a major part of the year’s story. The press dysfunction is itself a window into the unstable dynamics of Election 2008.At the Democratic convention, as during primary season, almost every oversold plotline was wrong. Those Hillary dead-enders — played on TV by a fringe posse of women roaming Denver in search of camera time — would re-enact Chicago 1968. With Hillary’s tacit approval, the roll call would devolve into a classic Democratic civil war. Sulky Bill would wreak havoc once center stage.On TV, each of these hot-air balloons was inflated nonstop right up to the moment they were punctured by reality, at which point the assembled bloviators once more expressed shock, shock at the unexpected denouement....Meanwhile, the candidate known as “No Drama Obama” because of his personal cool was stealthily hatching a drama of his own. As the various commentators pronounced the convention flat last week — too few McCain attacks on opening night, too “minimalist” a Hillary endorsement on Tuesday, and so forth — Obama held his cards to his chest backstage and built slowly, step by step, to his Thursday night climax. The dramatic arc was as meticulously calibrated as every Obama political strategy..
..No major Obama speech — each breathlessly hyped in advance as do-or-die and as the “the most important of his career” — has been a disaster; most have been triples or home runs, if not grand slams. What is most surprising is how astonished the press still is at each Groundhog Day’s replay of the identical outcome. Indeed, the disconnect between the reality of this campaign and how it is perceived and presented by the mainstream media is now a major part of the year’s story. The press dysfunction is itself a window into the unstable dynamics of Election 2008.
At the Democratic convention, as during primary season, almost every oversold plotline was wrong. Those Hillary dead-enders — played on TV by a fringe posse of women roaming Denver in search of camera time — would re-enact Chicago 1968. With Hillary’s tacit approval, the roll call would devolve into a classic Democratic civil war. Sulky Bill would wreak havoc once center stage.On TV, each of these hot-air balloons was inflated nonstop right up to the moment they were punctured by reality, at which point the assembled bloviators once more expressed shock, shock at the unexpected denouement..
..Meanwhile, the candidate known as “No Drama Obama” because of his personal cool was stealthily hatching a drama of his own. As the various commentators pronounced the convention flat last week — too few McCain attacks on opening night, too “minimalist” a Hillary endorsement on Tuesday, and so forth — Obama held his cards to his chest backstage and built slowly, step by step, to his Thursday night climax. The dramatic arc was as meticulously calibrated as every Obama political strategy..
Vladimir Putin accuses Bush of provoking Georgia conflict to help John McCain
Times Online - Aug 28 2008
“The suspicion arises that someone in the United States especially created this conflict with the aim of making the situation more tense and creating a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of US President.” Mr Putin said that his defence officials had told him that Americans were operating in the conflict zone in Georgia during the fighting. He added: “It should be admitted that they would do so only following direct orders from their leaders. Therefore, they were acting in implementing those orders, doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is their leader.”
“The suspicion arises that someone in the United States especially created this conflict with the aim of making the situation more tense and creating a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of US President.”
Mr Putin said that his defence officials had told him that Americans were operating in the conflict zone in Georgia during the fighting.
He added: “It should be admitted that they would do so only following direct orders from their leaders. Therefore, they were acting in implementing those orders, doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is their leader.”
Rick MacArthur: “You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America”
As the Democratic National Convention begins in Denver, Democracy Now! speaks to Harper’s publisher Rick MacArthur on his new book You Can’t Be President. MacArthur says that the popular notion that any American can become president only reinforces the “destructive national delusion that widespread, up-from-the-ground, truly popular democracy, both political and economic, really exists in America.” To assume that, he says, is equal to believing that Santa Claus exists.
..The barriers to entry to politics in the United States are—the principal one is that you cannot raise money on the level of an incumbent congressman or an incumbent politician....he goes around saying he doesn’t take money from lobbyists. Well, it’s true that he doesn’t take money from registered lobbyists, but only a child or a naïf would think that corporate lawyers or Washington lawyers don’t lobby informally in front regulatory commissions and in front of members of Congress, and Obama has been all over the corporate law community....Howard Dean was, I think, a genuine and authentic independent. He was kind of a centrist or a liberal Republican, if you look at him on the ideological scale, but he was a real threat to the Democratic Party establishment, because he was able to raise so much money on the internet and from small contributors....And the Clintons had to stop this. And so, the faction around the Clintons that wanted Kerry to lose, because Kerry had to lose for Clinton to run in 2008, they organized a 527 group to hit Dean in Iowa, which has never been written enough about, and they raised money from all these Clinton loyalists....And this is something that you have to understand in order to understand why Barack Obama is so cautious. He doesn’t want to take on the central funding apparatus of the Democratic Party. He wants to take it over. He wants to take it away from the Clintons, and the Clintons are very, very unhappy.. ..It’s not an ideological fight, it’s a fight over power. There is very little difference between Obama and Clinton on the big issues of the day. And the Clintons are still running. Hillary Clinton is hoping very much that Obama will lose and that she can present herself in 2012 on the “I told you so” ticket.....There was a meeting up in Westchester just a month ago between Clinton fundraisers and Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chairman who’s working, I think—I don’t know if she’s finance chairman, but she’s very involved in raising money for McCain. Lynn Forester De Rothschild, she’s been quoted in the papers saying that she’s not happy with the Obama fundraising apparatus. It’s like two corporations trying to merge, and one of the corporations doesn’t really want to be taken over. The Clinton corporation is hoping, really, that the Obama corporation will bankrupt itself and fall apart and that they can resume their drive for power in four years..
..The barriers to entry to politics in the United States are—the principal one is that you cannot raise money on the level of an incumbent congressman or an incumbent politician..
..he goes around saying he doesn’t take money from lobbyists. Well, it’s true that he doesn’t take money from registered lobbyists, but only a child or a naïf would think that corporate lawyers or Washington lawyers don’t lobby informally in front regulatory commissions and in front of members of Congress, and Obama has been all over the corporate law community..
..Howard Dean was, I think, a genuine and authentic independent. He was kind of a centrist or a liberal Republican, if you look at him on the ideological scale, but he was a real threat to the Democratic Party establishment, because he was able to raise so much money on the internet and from small contributors..
..And the Clintons had to stop this. And so, the faction around the Clintons that wanted Kerry to lose, because Kerry had to lose for Clinton to run in 2008, they organized a 527 group to hit Dean in Iowa, which has never been written enough about, and they raised money from all these Clinton loyalists..
..And this is something that you have to understand in order to understand why Barack Obama is so cautious. He doesn’t want to take on the central funding apparatus of the Democratic Party. He wants to take it over. He wants to take it away from the Clintons, and the Clintons are very, very unhappy..
..It’s not an ideological fight, it’s a fight over power. There is very little difference between Obama and Clinton on the big issues of the day. And the Clintons are still running. Hillary Clinton is hoping very much that Obama will lose and that she can present herself in 2012 on the “I told you so” ticket...
..There was a meeting up in Westchester just a month ago between Clinton fundraisers and Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chairman who’s working, I think—I don’t know if she’s finance chairman, but she’s very involved in raising money for McCain. Lynn Forester De Rothschild, she’s been quoted in the papers saying that she’s not happy with the Obama fundraising apparatus. It’s like two corporations trying to merge, and one of the corporations doesn’t really want to be taken over. The Clinton corporation is hoping, really, that the Obama corporation will bankrupt itself and fall apart and that they can resume their drive for power in four years..
Pakistan is at last finding its voice. The US would be wise not to gag it
Mohsin Hamid - The Guardian, Friday August 22 2008
..As a democracy, Pakistan's role in this drama is likely to change because a great tension at the centre of the US-Pakistan alliance will increasingly be exposed. That tension, in a nutshell, is this: most Pakistanis are anti-America. For a combination of reasons, and despite evident fondness for American products and individuals, my impression is that most Pakistanis have extremely negative views of the US as a geopolitical player....The anti-America sentiment suggests that Pakistanis would like greater independence in their relationship with the US. But the moribund state of Pakistan's economy and the fraught nature of its security situation make the country utterly dependent on US aid and eager for hi-tech American weaponry. The challenge facing Pakistan's new leaders is to explain that Pakistanis cannot have both. If they are to satisfy their constituents, they will need to articulate a plan for increasingly putting Pakistan's interests first while gradually reducing the country's reliance on the US.The US, for its part, will need to adjust to a Pakistan in which anti-America sentiment could seriously undermine US interests. The US can best do this by offering Pakistan not the appearance of an alliance but the equality and mutual respect that constitutes the substance of one. Pakistan's people have already demonstrated through the ballot that they reject the Taliban worldview, and the number of Pakistanis who died in terrorist attacks last year alone exceeds the number of Americans killed on 9/11..
..As a democracy, Pakistan's role in this drama is likely to change because a great tension at the centre of the US-Pakistan alliance will increasingly be exposed. That tension, in a nutshell, is this: most Pakistanis are anti-America. For a combination of reasons, and despite evident fondness for American products and individuals, my impression is that most Pakistanis have extremely negative views of the US as a geopolitical player..
..The anti-America sentiment suggests that Pakistanis would like greater independence in their relationship with the US. But the moribund state of Pakistan's economy and the fraught nature of its security situation make the country utterly dependent on US aid and eager for hi-tech American weaponry. The challenge facing Pakistan's new leaders is to explain that Pakistanis cannot have both. If they are to satisfy their constituents, they will need to articulate a plan for increasingly putting Pakistan's interests first while gradually reducing the country's reliance on the US.
The US, for its part, will need to adjust to a Pakistan in which anti-America sentiment could seriously undermine US interests. The US can best do this by offering Pakistan not the appearance of an alliance but the equality and mutual respect that constitutes the substance of one. Pakistan's people have already demonstrated through the ballot that they reject the Taliban worldview, and the number of Pakistanis who died in terrorist attacks last year alone exceeds the number of Americans killed on 9/11..
How Obama Reconciles Dueling Views on Economy
..It was the battle of the Bobs. On one side was Clinton’s labor secretary and longtime friend, Bob Reich, who argued that the government should invest in roads, bridges, worker training and the like to stimulate the economy and help the middle class. On the other side was Bob Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs executive turned White House aide, who favored reducing the deficit to soothe the bond market, bring down interest rates and get the economy moving again. Clinton cast his lot with Rubin....“One of the points I raised,” Obama told me, “is if you just use you, Bob, and you, Bob, as caricatures, the truth is, both of you acknowledge the world is more complicated.” By this, Obama didn’t simply mean that their views were more nuanced than many outsiders understood. He meant that both have come to acknowledge that the other man is, in part, correct....For the bottom 80 percent of the population — those households making $118,000 or less — McCain’s various tax cuts would mean a net savings of about $200 a year on average. Obama’s proposals would bring $900 a year in savings. But the income tax doesn’t take the biggest bite out of most families’ annual tax bill. The payroll tax does. Obama’s second-most-expensive proposal, after his health-care plan, is the equivalent of a $500 cut in the payroll tax for most workers....McCain, by continuing the basic thrust of Bush’s tax policies and adding a few new wrinkles, would cut taxes for the top 0.1 percent of earners — those making an average of $9.1 million — by another $190,000 a year, on top of the Bush reductions. Obama would raise taxes on this top 0.1 percent by an average of $800,000 a year. The bulk of Obama’s tax increases on the wealthy — about $500,000 of that $800,000 — would simply take away Bush’s tax cuts. The remaining $300,000 wouldn’t nearly reverse their pretax income gains in recent years. Since the mid-1990s, their inflation-adjusted pretax income has roughly doubled..
..It was the battle of the Bobs. On one side was Clinton’s labor secretary and longtime friend, Bob Reich, who argued that the government should invest in roads, bridges, worker training and the like to stimulate the economy and help the middle class. On the other side was Bob Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs executive turned White House aide, who favored reducing the deficit to soothe the bond market, bring down interest rates and get the economy moving again. Clinton cast his lot with Rubin..
..“One of the points I raised,” Obama told me, “is if you just use you, Bob, and you, Bob, as caricatures, the truth is, both of you acknowledge the world is more complicated.” By this, Obama didn’t simply mean that their views were more nuanced than many outsiders understood. He meant that both have come to acknowledge that the other man is, in part, correct..
..For the bottom 80 percent of the population — those households making $118,000 or less — McCain’s various tax cuts would mean a net savings of about $200 a year on average. Obama’s proposals would bring $900 a year in savings. But the income tax doesn’t take the biggest bite out of most families’ annual tax bill. The payroll tax does. Obama’s second-most-expensive proposal, after his health-care plan, is the equivalent of a $500 cut in the payroll tax for most workers..
..McCain, by continuing the basic thrust of Bush’s tax policies and adding a few new wrinkles, would cut taxes for the top 0.1 percent of earners — those making an average of $9.1 million — by another $190,000 a year, on top of the Bush reductions. Obama would raise taxes on this top 0.1 percent by an average of $800,000 a year. The bulk of Obama’s tax increases on the wealthy — about $500,000 of that $800,000 — would simply take away Bush’s tax cuts. The remaining $300,000 wouldn’t nearly reverse their pretax income gains in recent years. Since the mid-1990s, their inflation-adjusted pretax income has roughly doubled..
Russia Never Wanted a War
By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV - August 19, 2008
..Tskhinvali was in smoking ruins and thousands of people were fleeing — before any Russian troops arrived. Yet Russia was already being accused of aggression; news reports were often an embarrassing recitation of the Georgian leader’s deceptive statements.It is still not quite clear whether the West was aware of Mr. Saakashvili’s plans to invade South Ossetia, and this is a serious matter. What is clear is that Western assistance in training Georgian troops and shipping large supplies of arms had been pushing the region toward war rather than peace....Those who rush to judgment on what’s happening in the Caucasus, or those who seek influence there, should first have at least some idea of this region’s complexities. The Ossetians live both in Georgia and in Russia. The region is a patchwork of ethnic groups living in close proximity. Therefore, all talk of “this is our land,” “we are liberating our land,” is meaningless. We must think about the people who live on the land.The problems of the Caucasus region cannot be solved by force. That has been tried more than once in the past two decades, and it has always boomeranged.What is needed is a legally binding agreement not to use force. Mr. Saakashvili has repeatedly refused to sign such an agreement, for reasons that have now become abundantly clear..
..Tskhinvali was in smoking ruins and thousands of people were fleeing — before any Russian troops arrived. Yet Russia was already being accused of aggression; news reports were often an embarrassing recitation of the Georgian leader’s deceptive statements.
It is still not quite clear whether the West was aware of Mr. Saakashvili’s plans to invade South Ossetia, and this is a serious matter. What is clear is that Western assistance in training Georgian troops and shipping large supplies of arms had been pushing the region toward war rather than peace..
..Those who rush to judgment on what’s happening in the Caucasus, or those who seek influence there, should first have at least some idea of this region’s complexities. The Ossetians live both in Georgia and in Russia. The region is a patchwork of ethnic groups living in close proximity. Therefore, all talk of “this is our land,” “we are liberating our land,” is meaningless. We must think about the people who live on the land.
The problems of the Caucasus region cannot be solved by force. That has been tried more than once in the past two decades, and it has always boomeranged.What is needed is a legally binding agreement not to use force. Mr. Saakashvili has repeatedly refused to sign such an agreement, for reasons that have now become abundantly clear..
