The only lesson from the 2010 Midterms...

... is this.

9/11? What 9/11?

The Afghan War is now officially about the fuckin' lucre. We will never leave now.

update: Well, I've since learned (see here, and links therin) that the "discovery" of 1 trillion in mineral wealth beneath Afghanistan is not quite so fresh and its importance to the Afghan economy has been exaggerated. Mining companies need an easy way to get the loot out of the country, after all.

Whatevs. Judging by the feverish manner with which the story "broke", I'd say the Pentagon is angling for another justification for war. Afghans are fucked five ways from Tuesday.

Ron and Rand Paul: Why some on the Right are isolationists.

Back when I was a bit more politically naive, I appreciated the paleocon worldview. Yeah, they're racists. Yeah, they are the nadir of human progress. But they oppose neocons. And the enemy of my enemy is my-- well, let's just leave it at that. For example, I would watch Pat Buchanan on Chris Matthews say something old and grizzled and bitter about Bush and how he was fucking up everything and I would say to myself, "Awww. He's jusa big o' teddy-baywr! How'd he get mixed up in the Nixon administration?"

Now, despite their isolationism, I would prefer that paleocons not get anywhere near positions where they can affect foreign policy. I would go as far as to say that neocons are slightly better because, although every corner of the globe they touch turns into a charred hellscape, the neocons rape and pillage to provide for our economy. For now, we have money. This means we can use our lucre to buy the myriad goods and services gained through our globe-raping. On the other hand, if paleocons were in charge, Jesus would seriously think about coming again.

Obviously I'm just being a smartass, but my gut says paleocons would be worse. Exhibits A and B are Paul Sr. and Jr., or Ron and Rand Paul. Read this post by digby for some good background on the Pauls. The post explains that Paul Sr. was very much a part of the black-helicopter crowd in the nineties. He only gained cross-partisan support in 2008 because he was anti-war and anti-neocon, but he is nonetheless a liberal's nightmare. His son seems to be no better, and maybe worse. Like his dad, Junior rejects the neocon agenda of world domination and has actually parroted his father's controversial statements about how meddling in the Middle East contributes to terrorism. However, he has thrown in his lot with the Tea Party, a group of people who's respect for human rights is limited in scope to those with white skin and penises and limited in substance to property rights. Rand Paul also leads an army of militia-types with automatic weapons, who Rand claimed were merely protecting the integrity of the ballot during his recent primary victory. His opponent from the GOP establishment was complaining about these intimidation tactics, which made me do my Nelson laugh.

Ron and Rand are, above all else, very good politicians. They have found a highly nutritious niche market of voters to feed on, and now that our economy is in the shitter, their niche has turned into a veritable ecosystem of discontent, racial resentment and downright hate. This ecosystem is what fuels isolationism on the Right. That, and the fact that warfare has not gone very well for us lately. Anti-war liberals must remember that all anti-war sentiment on the Right is maintained exclusively by racism and xenophobia. If it were not for xenophobia, everyone on the Right would be like William Kristol, as opposed to Pat Buchanan. Isolationism has always been out there as a political force. It did not disappear in the Cold War. Remember the Balkans in the nineties? Somalia? Back then, when Clinton was directing America's military might against non-commies, everyone on the Right was a goddamn hippy. Hint: they were not being peaceful. They were being isolationist. Big difference. For fuck sake, right-wingers criticized Clinton for killing Iraqis!

just, just -- fuck...

via Digby:

The US airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan contains a facility for detainees that is distinct from its main prison, the Red Cross has confirmed to the BBC.

Nine former prisoners have told the BBC that they were held in a separate building, and subjected to abuse.

This is pretty big news and I'm gonna read it in a second, but I want to say a few words on that last part for a second. Nine former prisoners were held in the secret, shitty prison. It's always the former prisoners, isn't it? As in, they used to be prisoners. As in, they were let go. As in, they probably didn't even take a shit where they were not supposed to, yet they were held in the pound-me-in-the-ass prison. How many former prisoners are wandering out there in the world, free? Well, there are about 500 that were special enough to land in Gitmo. That's just the tip of the iceberg though. Many, many more went through Bagram, Abu Ghraib, the black sites, the blacker sites, etc... How many of them would be as pissed and unforgiving as I would be? That is to say, really, really unforgiving. Like, homicidal? How many are going back to broken homes and broken communities? How many have nothing? How many have no one?

Then think about this -- because it's fuckin' fun, that's why! -- think about how many people in the business of running this morally bankrupt government give a rat's ass. If you have not thought about that, you do not deserve to be a fucking dog catcher.

2000 - 2009 in Memoriam: Fuck You.

Fuck you, 2000 - 2009. You were definitely the shittiest decade since the 1930s. Everyone knows about the DOW going nowhere, but this decade was worthless politically as well. Again, it was not nearly as bad as the 1930s, which saw the disintegration of the peace following WWI and the rise of Hitler, but it was pretty horrible nonetheless. The decade basically started on September 11, which sucked. However, history will record that our reaction to those attacks precipitated much more death and destruction than Osama bin Laden could have ever dreamed of. Republicans and their allies in dank think-tanks like the Project for the New American Century thought they could turn a stolen election in 2000 into a new mandate for world domination. September 11 was their trigger -- their Pearl Harbor. It started two Middle Eastern wars that were basically about oil and hegemony. The rest is history. The only good thing about this decade was that the aggressor finally lost. The belligerent nation, the United States of America, will fall by the wayside. This century will belong to others. We don't deserve it.

Fuck the War Pigs

... and Merry Christmas.

The Good War and You

There's one aspect of the Obama Nobel Award story that I haven't heard much about. I haven't heard the usual suspects like Greenwald, Digby, Chris Floyd, etc., ask the question, "Now that a president can win the Peace Prize despite escalating a dirty war, is the Bush Doctrine here to stay?" You know the Bush Doctrine (because you're not Sarah Palin): It's our post-9/11 ad hoc foreign policy of preventative war (and preventative detention and torture). There was a brief debate about it pretty early on because Bush and Co. was trying to distract the public from another debate that should have been taking place: whether or not the Iraq War casus belli was complete crap. Anyway, I know Afghanistan is the "good war" and all, but frankly I feel really, really, viscerally enraged with the conduct of this administration, so I'm searching for a way to compare this Afghan escalation to the Iraq invasion. Won't you join me?

Disclaimer: Before I proceed, don't tell me I should not have been surprised by this escalation, because I'm not. I'm enraged; there's a huge difference. I voted for Black Jesus because Hilary was channeling Giuliani in the Primary and McCain-- well, if McCain were President we would all be in Iran right now, and it might look something like this:

Battle of Jerusalem - MyVideo
(Only I don't think McCain knows his way around scaffolding and siegecraft. I could be wrong though. He is old as fuck.)

In his speech on the escalation, Obama actually addressed his liberal critics, trying to convince them of how Afghanistan is not Vietnam. The reasons he gave were surficially reasonable: 

Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action.

Correction: They recognized-- past-tense-- the legitamacy of our action. Now how gung-ho are they? Not very. Except perhaps for Britain, to the dismay of its people. 

Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency. 

Correction: How do we know? Soldiers aren't getting killed as much as they were in Iraq? Whatever. Obama might add that we're not facing the armed forces of another country, which North Vietnam was. I think they earned the right to call themselves a country once they kicked the French out.

And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan, and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border. To abandon this area now – and to rely only on efforts against al Qaeda from a distance – would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.  

Correction:  He's basically saying here that if we don't fight them there, they'll kill us here. That argument was bullshit when Bush made it, and it remains wet and steamy to this day. The Taliban were not "harboring" Al Qaeda. That's like saying Woodstock harbored the brown acid. If we're going to blame the Taliban for harboring Al Qaeda, then when are we going to blame Saudi Arabia for nurturing the reactionary, theocratic cultural environment that produced the 9/11 hijackers?

Vietnam and Iraq were all about sending a message (Specifically, "Suck on this.") to our shadowy enemies. We settled for those pitiful actions because we can't very well attack shadows-- only send them stern messages. Now tell me: how has this eight-year-old Afghan war not reached the point where we are vainly and haggardly trying to get our terrorist enemies to "suck on this"? 

Now what about this Bush Doctrine? I think I've shown that Afghanistan, at this point in the war, is basically the same as Iraq and Vietnam. However, I also feel that it's necessary to throw the Bush Doctrine albatross around Obama's neck for good measure. But I can't. I've realized that there was no such thing as the Bush Doctrine. It was just a euphemism for wild ejaculation and feces-tossing. The real villain in American foreign policy has always been imperialism, which is of course nothing new, except that now they give out Nobel Peace Prizes for it.

End of liveblogging.

Don Ganja (NPR): "This address was seriose bizniss"

Some Republican: "But I want more troops NOW-ah!!!! We can't set a timetable, EVAR!! We have to stay in Iraq-- I mean, Afghanistan."

Bernie Fuckin' Sanders [!!!!!]: Why isn't everyone else sending troops? I'll tell you why: they know what's up. And how do we pay for this? Chinese credit and the backs of the poor. Suck ma balls, Sanders out!

A real American hero!!!! [GI JOE!!!]: "This address was seriose bizniss."

And now, NPR presents the asshattery of EJ Dionne and Matt Continetti: [I'm not even going to try to parse their shit.]

Me: Well liberals, we had a good run there for about 5 minutes during the primaries, I think. But now, the Obama presidency is over. I thought he would last at least as long as Clinton, I really did. In the end, I think the minefield set by Bush (Iraq, tax cuts, torture, tanking the economy) was just too much. The Village refuses to allow bold change, and Dems are too cowardly to resist them and do what needs to be done. Today, we saw the successful completion of a coup that started a while ago. We now have a new president. This one is only a quarter black: