Two thoughts on Tuesday...

The idea that Obama is some kind of socialist makes real leftists snicker into their frosted mini-wheats--but I think the Right has stumbled into an inchoate self-fulfilling prescience about health care reform if does turn out to contain a viable public option.   The word "socialist" has been flung around as a epithet with such lack of discrimination that it's losing its sting.  Moreover, if the public option proves to be popular and viable, identifying new reforms as "socialist"--even if they actually are--may prove to be an inadvertent argument in their favor. 

If U.S. forces in Afghanistan could hogtie Osama bin Laden and bring him back to New York, then Obama could probably withdraw unilaterally from Afghanistan without much domestic political cost, save for the usual caterwauling from the neocans.  I'm not saying that should be the goal in Afghanistan. My point is that people in the U.S.  think about foreign policy--and government policy in general--in terms of celebrity and personality to such an extent that Obama could do that whether or not withdrawing from Afghanistan is a wise policy. 

R.
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

The political is the personal(ity)

I have often complained about the role that features like "personality" and "sincerity" play in U.S. politics at the expense of sound policy & program. 

I wish we could elect colorless policy wonks as needed, but there doesn't seem to be any way around this fact of life as it pertains to American political discourse. 

Now even people who agree with him on the issues are complaining about Michael Moore's new movie, CAPITALISM, A LOVE STORY, on the grounds that it is also full of Michael Moore's self-promotion. 

I haven't seen it yet, but just off the top of my head, so what? 

It  seems to me that in the U.S. nobody can affect the national discourse without a robust egotism.  Case in point, the continuing influence of the batsh*t crazy right wing, despite their dwindling numbers.  Their leadership consists of personality and little else (Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, PALIN, the list goes on and on...)

I trust Michael Moore, egotist or not.  He's sincere and I like his fashion sense.

R.
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Juan Cole makes a case against involvement in Afghanistan

Juan Cole makes the case against further military involvement in Afghanistan. As far as I can tell, nobody knows more about the ethnic, political and sectarian divides in Central Asia and the Mideast than he does. I still question the analogy with Vietnam. It seems to me that the Taliban do not have the same kind of sophistication, nor the same kind of unitary grip on the Pashtun population that the Communist Party did with respect to the North Vietnamese.

Granted Afghanistan's government is weak, corrupt & oppressive, & there is general hostility toward Western involvement, it seems unthinkable that a Taliban-style state should be allowed to re-emerge in Afghanistan.     I hope the Obama Administration can come up with a hearts-and-mind strategy that works in tandem with the military side. If not, maybe the West should cut its losses & get out. But the human cost of that also seems unacceptable.  My reactionary friend (he knows who he is) thinks that Pakistan is key to what happens in Afghanistan.  The West should do whatever it can to help Pakistan consolidate itself as a modern, secular nation-state & that will go far toward depriving the Taliban forces of external support.   I agree & think that should be part of whatever hearts-and-minds stuff the Obama Administration can come up with. 

 

Afghanistan has even less chance than Iraq of becoming like Sweden any time in the near future.  Perhaps the most we can hope for is an Iran-style pseudo-democracic oligarchic state, autocratic in character, tempered somewhat by corruption and inefficiency, but possessing vestiges of a secular rule of law.   

 

But I have to think about a couple of Juan Cole's observations before I try and rebut them.  Not sure I can.

 

 

Blog: Informed Comment
Post: Is Afghanistan Vietnam or Iraq? Arguing with Obama and Rubin
Link: http://www.juancole.com/2009/09/is-afghanistan-vietnam-or-iraq-arguing.html

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