brainiac conspiracy

Birth Pangs

Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here:

[A]s Iraq prepares for its first national election in four years on April 30, it is hard to imagine democracy activists rallying weekly in Iraqi streets. For months, suicide bombers have been dynamiting themselves in crowded Shiite markets, coffee shops, and funeral tents, while Shiite militias and government security forces have terrorized Sunni communities. The Iraqi state is breaking apart again: from the west in Anbar province, where after weeks of anarchic violence more than 380,000 people have fled their homes; to the east in Diyala province, where tit-for-tat sectarian killings are rampant; to the north in Mosul, where al-Qaeda-linked militants control large swathes of territory; to the south in Basra, home to Iraq’s oil riches, where Shiite militias are once more ascendant; to Iraq’s Kurds, who warn that the country is disintegrating and contemplate full independence from Baghdad.

More than 2,500 Iraqis have been killed since the start of the year, including nearly three hundred in the first ten days of April; in the capital itself, which has become a showcase for the country’s multiplying conflicts and uncontrolled violence, there have been several brazen attacks on government buildings, and a terrifying string of car bombings, including eight on April 9 alone.

Thousands of innocents were needlessly slaughtered while America's thought leaders cheered on the carnage. But hey, looking forward.

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

James Jeffrey.

Okay, I realize that a paper with an op-ed page that's regularly publishes the collected wisdom of people like Hiatt and Cohen and Ignatius and Gerson and Thiessen and Rubin and Krauthammer is going to cheerlead for MOOOOOOOOAAR WAR 24/7. But it doesn't change the fact that there is absolutely nothing we can do over there. It's not our turf, and we have more pressing matters, closer to home, to which we should be attending.

---Baron V

Dead Horse, Flogged

Yeah, I know I do this a lot of it on this stupid blog, but it bears repeating that there has always been---and always will be---a strong moral imperative for convening that Truth & Reconciliation Commission. Because Iraq is a gift that keeps on giving:

[T]he Iraqi government is poised to legalize child marriage for the nation’s majority Shiite Muslim population. But the law, which some expect to pass before this month’s parliamentary elections, would do significantly more than that.

Called the Jaafari Personal Status Law, it would prohibit Muslim men from marrying non-Muslims, prevent women from leaving the house without their husband’s consent, automatically grant custody of children older than two to their father in divorce cases and legalize marital rape.

The law, which proponents say will save women’s “rights and dignity,” would also permit boys to marry as young as 15 and girls to marry as young as nine. Girls younger than nine would be permitted to marry with a parent’s approval.

These practices were banned under the tyrant Saddam. They are being reintroduced by our Friends in Freedom. When you think about the millions of people in the Middle East whose lives we have permanently fucked over, it really is amazing that we don't see truck bombs detonating every day in cities across America, now, isn't it?

---Baron V

Credit Where Due

It's not as comprehensive as convening a Truth & Reconciliation Commission, but it's at least a start in the right direction. The real key will be how heavily they redact the thing. But hey, baby steps.

---Baron V

Anniversaries

I really think we should rename St. Patrick's Day. Liberators Day works for me.

It's like what Pierce wrote the other day: We've had absolution without atonement for Iraq. It's a huge scar on our national psyche that we've already forgotten about and moved beyond. But Iraq will be unfinished business until and unless some kind of atonement is made, e.g., a Truth & Reconciliation Commission at the very least. Because if we don't atone for Iraq, somebody, somewhere, will force atonement upon us one day, and we're not going to like it one bit. But we'll deserve it all the same.

---Baron V

She Can't Be That Stupid

Or, maybe she is:

The chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence charged Tuesday that the CIA may have broken the law and violated the Constitution by secretly infiltrating computers used by her staff to assemble a scathing report on the spy agency’s now-defunct detention and interrogation program [...]

“The CIA’s search may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution,” Feinstein said. “It may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities.”

Annnnnnnd . . . so?

It may come as a shock to our senior Senator, but that's what the agency is. That's what it does. It can't fulfill its mission, i.e., destabilizing unfriendly governments and sabotaging leftist political movements, within the constraints imposed on it by both the Constitution and federal statute law. That's what the Church and Pike Committees found out. The only 100-percent effective remedy for this is to abolish the agency because secrecy and lies are generally not compatible with a healthy liberal democracy. But it's another compelling reason for that Truth & Reconciliation Commission, though!

---Baron V

Shocked, I Tell You

To learn that espionage has been going on in this establishment.

Snark aside, this silly sandbox spat should remind us all that people like Greenwald and Snowden, and Manning and Assange, are absolutely essential to a properly functioning liberal democracy. Sure, we will always need to keep some state secrets, but our history teaches us---even if Dianne Feinstein is just figuring it out---that when government arrogates unto itself the power to spy on anyone, any time, for any reason whatsoever, that power will inevitably be abused, and people will be harmed by it.

---Baron V

Dick-Swinging Contests

It's a feature of our politics, and nowhere is the wanking more fevered than in the realm of foreign policy. This has been going on for as long as I've been alive, and even though we keep blundering into places we don't belong---Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan---we never seem to learn the lesson. Well, some of us have, but too many people in our nation's foreign-policy establishment see any aggressive action by any other country as a direct provocation that is testing our toughness and our mettle, etc., and that's why we must have the most gigantic military appendage of anyone in the world. It's utterly wrong-headed, of course, but that alone doesn't disqualify you from being taken seriously in official Washington.

---Baron V

Watch What We Say

Not what we do:

President Barack Obama said Thursday that the United States would not accept any referendum on the status of Crimea unless passed with the approval of the interim government in Kiev.

Doing otherwise, Obama said in a statement at the White House, would “violate the Ukrainian constitution and international law.”

Shielding known war criminals from prosecution is also a violation of international law. So is lobbing missiles into countries that have not declared hostilities against you. Do any of the people who govern us ever pause to listen to themselves?

---Baron V

There's Money For Everything Under The Sun

Except for Americans who need it.

I mean, how about guaranteeing a billion-dollar loan to my neighborhood instead of fucking Ukraine? People here would be most grateful, because too many of us don't have any money because there aren't enough jobs to go around. But once again, fake crises take precedence over the real ones that afflict people here every day.

---Baron V

Tuesday Night Music Blogging

Because our newest friends in freedom are the nicest bunch of people.

---Baron V

Ratchet Down the Rhetoric

Because cooler heads will be more likely to break the impasse in Ukraine, while hotheads will be more likely to lead us to war. And given the geography we are talking about, it would be really, really easy to inadvertently start another World War over this. I don't think that's going to happen, but you never know. The bellicose hotheads who started World War I---and they were hotheads, most of them---didn't realize they had set it in motion until their soldiers all started slaughtering each other by the thousands. They thought it would be lark, not a charnel house. So again, time to tone down the discourse. It's the Russians' turf we're talking about, after all, and we trespass on it at our own risk.

---Baron V

Don't Just Do Something, Stand There

I've never understood the knee-jerk, "We Must Act!" reaction that so many people in Washington evince whenever there's a dust-up between some former Soviet states. It can't be about the human rights because we really don't care about human rights; some of the worst abusers on the planet are among our staunchest friends in freedom! It can't be about national sovereignty, either, since we really don't care about that. We sure didn't care about Iraq's or Afghanistan's sovereignty, now, did we? Then again, the "We Must Act!" crowd is composed, by and large, of the same exact people who were responsible for those other wars---which, come to think of it, is (a) a good reason for us to do nothing now, and (b) another reason to convene a Truth & Reconciliation Commission, because the people who gave us these other wars have obviously not been sufficiently chastened. If they were, they wouldn't be braying for more war but begging for our forgiveness.

---Baron V

Random Thought

Barack Obama comes in for his share of abuse on this blog---and as a rule, it's richly deserved!---but this Ukraine crisis reminds us that we should be thankful that he inhabits the White House instead of President McCain or President Romney or President Palin. That doesn't necessarily mean he'll act wisely in regards to Ukraine, but his odds are a helluva lot better than the competition's.

---Baron V

It's All in the Timing

Am wondering if the President will mention this in his big speech tomorrow:

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has collected and stored almost 200 million text messages a day from around the world, UK media report [...]

The reporting is based on leaks by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden and comes ahead of a key US policy announcement.

Basically, at this point I think we can safely assume that any online activity we engage in, and any digital communications we make, is being surveilled because of 19 guys with box cutters, none of whom pose a threat to us anymore. Sure, there's always the possibility of another, worse, attack down the road, but the people who govern us have been consumed by a fear that borders on the absolutely insane. Not to mention the fact that they keep pushing policies that make another terror attack all but inevitable.

---Baron V

Tried to Warn Them About This

And while I hate to say "I told you so," well, that's only because I did!

Actually no, it's not at all complicated. Iraq was never ours to "lose" in the first place. What we really "lost" was a regional balance of power in the Middle East---strengthening Israel and the Saudis, and isolating Iran---that had largely worked in our government's favor for the past 40 years, and the reason we lost it is because some foreign-policy geniuses in the past administration thought it would be a great idea to send the bull into the china shop and upend the balance of power in the region because freedom. But this would not be fair and balanced reporting, so we must solicit the opinions of President McCain and Attorney General Graham and all of the other persons were utterly wrong about Iraq at the time their own constituents were being conned into war. But that's what happened all the same, and AQ in Iraq is their legacy. It's really that simple.

---Baron V

Truth, Reconciliation, Etc.

I know I harp on this a lot, but if and/or when Iraq descends into anarchy, or becomes a brutal Islamist republic, people are going to start asking questions. They'd have every reason to! A Truth & Reconciliation Commission might---just might---provide them with the answers they need. We're not talking about marching Bush and Cheney and their minions off to prison (though it would be appropriate), we're only talking about giving the American people the truth-telling they deserve about Iraq, about torture, and about September 11. Because up to now, we still haven't been told everything!

---Baron V

Still Waiting For That Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Yes, I know we are governed by leaders who believe in Looking Forward, Never Back, but the fact remains that we can never fully understand nor learn the lessons of history if that history is withheld from us. If the secrets of history were unlocked to us instead, there's no telling what we might learn! We might even discover we've spent the last 12 years, you know, fighting the wrong people.

---Baron V

Peace Breaks Out

I was a bit glib on the subject this morning, so in fairness to the Obama administration, we shouldn't discount the significance of this Iran nuclear deal, even if it mostly doesn't hold. Our government's Iran policy has been all sorts of wrong for six decades---going all the way back to Mossadegh---so the ability of our government to sit down with its leaders without bellowing for regime change or accusing them of bad-faith negotiating: In other words, treating them as human beings deserving of dignity . . . well, we shouldn't have to proclaim this development as a big fuckin' deal, but given our track record, it really is. After years of hostilities throughout the last century, we've managed to make peace with the Germans, Japanese, Russians and Vietnamese, and there was never any reason why Iran should be any different. The only thing that's held us back from achieving this sooner, I think, has been the fear of what our Friends in Freedom in the region---and their warmongering supporters back home---would think. If the administration has decided their voices should be ignored, well, they're right. Warmongers should be ignored, unless there's actually cause for war. With Iran, that's never been the case. So again, more jaw, less war, and freeze out the war hawks.

---Baron V

Exceptions to the Rule

Elaborating on the previous post, unemployment is, generally, a bad thing since it represents a failure of the economic order to match productivity with output. On the other hand, there will never be anything like actual "full employment" because there will always be at least a few people in this country who deserve to be unemployed. This being post-millennial America, of course, they very rarely are.

---Baron V