"Just Let People Alone"

In the health care reform debate, Alan Grayson, Congressman from Florida (of all places), has become a lefty hero for many people, including myself, for speaking  truth to the Powers incarnate in that Know-Nothing contingent in the House (and elsewhere) commonly known as the Republican Party--& doing so with an admirable brevity & snarkiness. 
 
In his blog below, he asks the tough questions about U.S. Afghanistan policy and quotes Congressman David Obey: "Equally important, he said, "Do we really have the tools to overcome language, culture, history and a 90 percent illiteracy rate to sufficiently transform such a country?"
 
Grayson's argument for pulling out of Afghanistan is compelling, but I simply cannot agree.  If we do not have to tools we need, we should acquire them.  Let me qualify that immediately.  By "we" I don't simply mean the U.S. but as many nations as can be convinced to join together in the project, preferably under the auspices of the UN.  And "sufficiently transform" does not and should not mean trying to re-make the country into a Sweden or Norway. 
 
Minimally, the goal should be the eradication of the barbaric practices inflicted on women and some form of the rule of law, even if Sharia-based, but minus the draconian punishments meted out by the Taliban and still practiced to a large degree under the Karzai government. 
 
The Soviets actually planted the seeds of modernism during their occupation and I think that is a major reason there is a small but real women's rights movement there. 
 
I think of the project in Afghanistan not so much as nation-building, but as the repression of barbarianism.  Otherwise, let Afghanistan evolve as best it can.
 
It might mean dealing with the people of Afghanistan on a tribe-by-tribe, region-by-region basis, rather than mediating through a central government.  So be it.  (Though Juan Cole has remarks somewhere about how misleading the characterization of Afghanistan as "tribal" can be). 

 
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/10/alan-grayson-explains-best-policy-for.html
 

 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Obama the Anti-Christ....

See, it's obvious.  Those socialist Swedes on the Nobel Prize Committee are political commandos for the New World Order that the Anti-Christ Obama is seeking to bring about. 

And it's no accident that Obama is black--like the Devil Himself. 

(Mark my words--you will find something like this argument making the rounds on the Internet and the right wing radio shock jocks--I wouldn't be too surprised to see it show up in somewhat more civil form on Fox News...)

R.
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Olbermann as Murrow/Cronkite

He would like to be, I think.  He is a person of good will.  I think he may be hampered in part by the constraints of the current news format that demands that the news be "infotainment," and his demeanor is also molded by those constraints. 

But I caught in passing that he plans to devote an entire news hour to one of his "special comments" in support of health care reform--& I wouldn't be surprised if he comes out strongly for a single payer plan. 

I know that news anchors have editorialized before, but I am wondering if this is some kind of first. 

R.
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Effing crraziness...

Senator Huckleberry distances himself from Glenn Beck but avows the same kind of craziness.  

Saber-rattling & threatening a pre-emptive strike against Iran--I can think of few things better calculated to solidify support of the Iranian regime by the people--or better calculated to provoke Iran to go all out with their own pre-emptive strike against Israel and U.S. forces in Iraq.  What's to lose for them? 

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/attack-iran-before-israel/

R.
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

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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