Iraq Solution
The increasingly neocon-friendly Washington Post (talk about picking the wrong horse) has a bit today on the divisions within the Democratic Party over the future of Iraq. Shame on them for thinking - they should be as monolithic and top-down as the Bush Monarchy.
Zbignew Brzezinsky (former Carter NSA) and Rep. John Murtha are running the 'get out now' faction. Others, like John Kerry, are saying we have to 'finish the job' before we withdraw.
I do have a solution for Iraq. I'm not a pundit who can only tear down the Junta - I can also fix their egregious errors. Sure.
The first mistake that the Junta made in Iraq (of too many to count) was to under-man the occupation force. That led to lawlessness, looting, revenge-taking, and insecurity. I live in one of the most peaceful cities in the world, and if there were no cops on the street I'd get a gun and stay at home. Imagine Baghdad with no security. Actually, you don't have to imagine - just go there now.
But security by itself is no answer. It's a good start, but security is the means, not the end. The failure to secure Iraq is part of the overall failure to make Iraq prosperous. And that failure comes straight from the ideology of the neocons who conned us into the war in the first place.
So step one for winning Iraq: stop the neocon ideology. Neocons are using Iraq as a petrie dish to experiment with their misbegotten cartel-capitalist-fake-free-market economic theory. Knock it off.
That means no more billions to Halliburton and no more billions to the Iraqi elite. Neocons hate a free market - free market talk is just one of their core lies. Instead, they want to establish a mercantile nobility. They want a class of corporate wealth to rule all, and have everyone else subservient to them. They don't ever want to compete for anything (because they lose). They want all goods handed to them and to their wealthy partners.
And that's the Iraq they're building. No sweat that the populace is suffering - just be sure the rich are okay and have power and water and security.
What I'm proposing is a "New Deal for Iraq." Get money and services into the hands of the populace. Dust off the FDR laybook and get Iraqis to work - the national unemployment rate is over 40%, and is 100% in many places - and you wonder where the insurgency gets volunteers?
Start a National Recovery Agency, public works projects (lord knows they need them), spend the money that's been allocated and then spend some more. Want other countries to get involved? Solicit their business (instead of shutting them out because they wouldn't believe our lies and join the invasion). The more the merrier.
Let the military stay and train the Iraqis as cops and counter-terrorists - not as a traditional military. The US military can keep the Iraqnians and Syrians out. Iraqis need a security force that will walk a beat and enforce the rule of law in favor of average Iraqis.
The problem is not security, it's prosperity. As long as Iraqis are poor and unemployed, and they don't have clean water and indoor plumbing (or any sewage system), and they don't have electricity to run air conditioners, they will hate us and support the insurgents.
They need an economy that works for them. The Junta has built a mini-Junta in Iraq, complete with a bought-and-paid-for media and fat cats who suck all the money out of the economy and into their pockets. Just like home!
And just like home, nothing there is going to work until the bums get thrown out of power. The "Brownies" of the Junta are destroying not only our future, but our reputation. A New Deal would fix it.
With that in place, we can draw down US forces in 2007.
The only thing certain about the course we're on now is that it will eventually bring down the US as well as Iraq.
Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." The more serve the neocons and 'stay the course,' the more we lose.
More Post
Josh Marshall has been monitoring the media's efforts to make the current Republican scandals into bi-opartisan affairs. The WaPo does its best to help that effort in its story today about how the Congressional ethics committee has done zippity-all in the past year.
Of course, nowhere does it talk about how the Republicans tried to change the rules to let their scumbags off. The process has always been that if the bipartisan committee couldn't agree to act on an accusation, the investigation would automatically start. That way, a partisan stonewalling effort couldn't save a wrong-doer from investigation.
Republicans wanted to reverse that - so that with no agreement, an accused Congressperson would be off the hook. So the Republicans on the ethics panel could effectively veto any investigation into a dirtball like Tom DeLay.
The Democrats wouldn't allow them to do it. The only way they could stop it was to stop the Committee. So the rule change hasn't gone through, but the COmittee's been sidelined as well.
But if you read the Post, you'll come away thionking that both sides are at fault, and that scandals like the Abramoff thing are tarring both sides.
Sorry, but no. This is all about Republican corruption and their efforts to hide it. Period.
Zbignew Brzezinsky (former Carter NSA) and Rep. John Murtha are running the 'get out now' faction. Others, like John Kerry, are saying we have to 'finish the job' before we withdraw.
I do have a solution for Iraq. I'm not a pundit who can only tear down the Junta - I can also fix their egregious errors. Sure.
The first mistake that the Junta made in Iraq (of too many to count) was to under-man the occupation force. That led to lawlessness, looting, revenge-taking, and insecurity. I live in one of the most peaceful cities in the world, and if there were no cops on the street I'd get a gun and stay at home. Imagine Baghdad with no security. Actually, you don't have to imagine - just go there now.
But security by itself is no answer. It's a good start, but security is the means, not the end. The failure to secure Iraq is part of the overall failure to make Iraq prosperous. And that failure comes straight from the ideology of the neocons who conned us into the war in the first place.
So step one for winning Iraq: stop the neocon ideology. Neocons are using Iraq as a petrie dish to experiment with their misbegotten cartel-capitalist-fake-free-market economic theory. Knock it off.
That means no more billions to Halliburton and no more billions to the Iraqi elite. Neocons hate a free market - free market talk is just one of their core lies. Instead, they want to establish a mercantile nobility. They want a class of corporate wealth to rule all, and have everyone else subservient to them. They don't ever want to compete for anything (because they lose). They want all goods handed to them and to their wealthy partners.
And that's the Iraq they're building. No sweat that the populace is suffering - just be sure the rich are okay and have power and water and security.
What I'm proposing is a "New Deal for Iraq." Get money and services into the hands of the populace. Dust off the FDR laybook and get Iraqis to work - the national unemployment rate is over 40%, and is 100% in many places - and you wonder where the insurgency gets volunteers?
Start a National Recovery Agency, public works projects (lord knows they need them), spend the money that's been allocated and then spend some more. Want other countries to get involved? Solicit their business (instead of shutting them out because they wouldn't believe our lies and join the invasion). The more the merrier.
Let the military stay and train the Iraqis as cops and counter-terrorists - not as a traditional military. The US military can keep the Iraqnians and Syrians out. Iraqis need a security force that will walk a beat and enforce the rule of law in favor of average Iraqis.
The problem is not security, it's prosperity. As long as Iraqis are poor and unemployed, and they don't have clean water and indoor plumbing (or any sewage system), and they don't have electricity to run air conditioners, they will hate us and support the insurgents.
They need an economy that works for them. The Junta has built a mini-Junta in Iraq, complete with a bought-and-paid-for media and fat cats who suck all the money out of the economy and into their pockets. Just like home!
And just like home, nothing there is going to work until the bums get thrown out of power. The "Brownies" of the Junta are destroying not only our future, but our reputation. A New Deal would fix it.
With that in place, we can draw down US forces in 2007.
The only thing certain about the course we're on now is that it will eventually bring down the US as well as Iraq.
Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." The more serve the neocons and 'stay the course,' the more we lose.
More Post
Josh Marshall has been monitoring the media's efforts to make the current Republican scandals into bi-opartisan affairs. The WaPo does its best to help that effort in its story today about how the Congressional ethics committee has done zippity-all in the past year.
Of course, nowhere does it talk about how the Republicans tried to change the rules to let their scumbags off. The process has always been that if the bipartisan committee couldn't agree to act on an accusation, the investigation would automatically start. That way, a partisan stonewalling effort couldn't save a wrong-doer from investigation.
Republicans wanted to reverse that - so that with no agreement, an accused Congressperson would be off the hook. So the Republicans on the ethics panel could effectively veto any investigation into a dirtball like Tom DeLay.
The Democrats wouldn't allow them to do it. The only way they could stop it was to stop the Committee. So the rule change hasn't gone through, but the COmittee's been sidelined as well.
But if you read the Post, you'll come away thionking that both sides are at fault, and that scandals like the Abramoff thing are tarring both sides.
Sorry, but no. This is all about Republican corruption and their efforts to hide it. Period.
posted by fiduciary at 8:48 AM
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