The Conservative Brotherhood

Today the Nobel Peace Prize winner is going to announce the escalation of a war against an enemy no longer situated on the field of battle before the Long Gray Line at West Point. With assuredly Periclean eloquence he will explain to the graduating class, four years removed from high school, the national security necessity of continuing eight years of futile invasion of a nation encompassing 500,000 square miles in response to an attack allegedly plotted by non-Afghans in several tents. He will make clear the accounting sheet tally of $233,000,000,000 spent thus far as unwelcome guests in a country whose national GNP of $7,000,000,000, is one-fourth the size of the sacrosanct bonuses distributed at Goldman Sachs this year. And he will explain their several future deployments to Afghanistan, or to Iraq – the other lie. He will tell them these fool’s errands are worth their young lives. Duty, honor, Goldman.

The last few days have been a re-education for me. Any pretense of post-racialism crumbles when confronted with headlines where any dubious racial aspect can be introduced. For instance, those by turns convenient and then inconvenient poster children for post-racialism, Obama and Woods, always ignite the sleeping embers of racialism when details of their political and personal lives don’t comport as some would desire. I don’t know if jocularity or apprehension is the proper response when Obama is castigated as half-white and Woods is supposedly insulted by being called only half-black. Both had black fathers but the peculiarities of “the American disease” have rearranged the priority of their respective suffixes without mediating the enmity many display toward foolish and meaningless hyphenations.

The House version of health care reform has reignited the abortion argument. Recent commentators have restated their opinions using familiar terminology such as “moral imperative”, “God’s image”, and the newly fashionable “socialist” medicine. There have also been references to the disproportionate number of black fetuses aborted. This statement is often left tantalizingly provocative by the tactical absence of the qualifier “elective”, suggesting that abortion, by design, has a greater involuntary gravitational pull on a mentally deficient race of people. There can be many sociological permutations developed from such a controversial subject and the above examples are among the most common. I will admit I have an intellectual prejudice leaning towards the fusion of sperm and oocyte as the beginning of human life, but I part company with those choosing to make topical adversaries of atheists and socialists. If you want to protest an enemy, go down to your nearest law school. Roe v. Wade was not a theological or moral decision. It was a legal decision.

In previous posts I mentioned the thousand-plus military bases the U.S. has dispersed around the globe. Hopefully interested parties have verified my claims, and if found correct, have been encouraged to modify notions on how this nation may be viewed from other perspectives. It would be easy, it seems to me, for some to regard such omnipresence as a tangible manifestation of empire. Admittedly it is not an empire of the old model, but more accurately Empire 2.0. It isn’t a collection of colonies, but is instead an accumulation of real estate parcels. A few hundred or thousand acres purchased or leased here and there accompanied with Status of Forces agreements, characterizes the modern imperial structure. This arrangement provides local influence without the appearance of gross suzerainty. It provides platforms from which to project military power and buttress American business interests regionally. And overlapped with other strategically placed bases provides American “scent marking” over much of the planet. If the sun never sets on American military real estate it can be argued an empire exists ipso facto. At least it was so argued in the past. This non-traditional structure allows distracted Americans to discount charges of imperialism. However, indigenous citizens seeing the Stars and Stripes waving in their backyards can justifiably question America’s presumed right to hegemony.

Did Bob Parks mention "The New World Order"? My, oh my.

On 10/27 and 10/29 Thomas Sowell uncharacteristically diverged from being an economist and presented himself as an ideologue in published articles entitled “Dismantling America” parts one and two. In them he opined the present administration is proceeding in a particularly un-American way. The first example he gave was the so-called “Pay Czar” cutting executive “pay” by 50 to 90 percent. I feel that an uninitiated person reading only Mr. Sowell’s article might not have a balanced or fully developed basis for forming an opinion on this issue. It is my understanding that no adjustment was made to the effected executives salaries. The adjustment was made in “bonuses”, which is a little different. And of course the Pay Czar didn’t manipulate the salaries or bonuses of all executives in America, only the bonuses of those employed by those banks which received federal bail-out money. Although Mr. Sowell didn’t mention it, there are some holding the position that this Pay Czar is an officer of the executive branch of the Federal government and therefore requires the advice and consent of Congress to be appointed, which didn’t occur. That may be a valid point, but that isn’t Mr. Sowell’s complaint. He thinks the audacious move to cut bonuses is tantamount to a government take-over of private business. But, there is another way to look at it. A case could be made that the government infusion of public money into failing or teetering private banks in exchange for stock, makes the government a substantial shareholder in those companies, and the Pay Czar voting the proxy of the American public is well within the rights typical to shareholding to instruct the Board of Directors or executive powers of the enterprise as to the compensation of company officers the shareholders feel is appropriate. I personally don’t know why shareholders of all businesses don’t rationalize the compensation of officers and retain more profit for themselves via dividends. The disconnect between the munificent sums thought necessary to incentivize management and the apparently meaninglessness of financial incentives to wage earners is staggering, and isn’t justified by any legitimate psychological model I am aware of. Nevertheless, this shareholder’s prerogative exercised by the Pay Czar is not outside the norms of capitalist or corporate procedure. The alternative to the demand of adjustment of bonuses could have been, and should have been, the loaning of the necessary funds at an interest rate commensurate to what the banks would have charged their own customers in similar circumstances. Would that “proper” capitalism have both satisfied Mr. Sowell and addressed the financial crisis?

I realize some of my opinions may encourage the thought I am a burned-out hippie conspiracy theory type, functionally lobotomized by an acid induced hallucination of a bullet wheezing past my ear from the grassy knoll. Enough already with the Vietnam allusions and pointless skepticism about 9/11, let move on. Decision on Afghanistan is complicated enough without peering through the yet unfocused prism of history, you may say. But, we can't ignore the past. The light of revelation is wired in series. If Lewis and Clark didn't know their point of origin they wouldn't have been explorers, they would have been lost. It is sometimes necessary to disassemble history to understand how the small parts, serendipity, mistakes, hubris, good intentions, and venality combine into a motive force that can be steered in any direction according to the narrative you choose to accept. For example, the shade tree Barton W. Mitchell chose to rest under could arguably be as essential to our present national reality as Newton's apple tree was to modern science. One almost invisible strand of spider silk is sometimes the tie that binds. When I suggest that oil and natural gas may have played a substantial, maybe dominant part in the formulations of those crafting an outline for 21st century American geo-political strategy, I am not sublimating the energy realities of modern societies, and I am not too obtuse to recognize the effect of $4.00 a gallon gasoline played in the political regime change of the last election. I can also understand the allure of the pipe dream of perpetual preeminence that lay in attempting to selfishly and strategically deny any other influence over these resources equal to or greater than our own. And I admit it was unfair to caricature those implementing our military conquest of the oil and gas regions as inherently evil, moustache twirling, Snidley Whiplash's of American Exceptionalism. But I think it is worthwhile to ascertain, due to their close proximity, if their best civic fiduciary judgment wasn't compromised by long term exposure to the radiation and riches of Dwight Eisenhower's feared Military/Industrial Complex; in the same way the recent bank bail-outs can and should be scrutinized taking into account Robert Rubin’s, Hank Paulsen’s, Larry Summers’, and Timothy Geithner’s intellectual and material conditioning on Wall Street.

Some were distressed that I mentioned "The Project for a New American Century" publication in my blog the other day discussing our future path in Afghanistan. Oh my, not all the 9/11 stuff again! I can understand the shudder. I have been very clumsy in expressing my views on that event and its aftermath. And over the time I have been participating on this site I have probably bored many by relating my views to Vietnam. I know those of a certain age resent what they feel is overblown attention to the decade of the Sixties. But the lesson of that era is that the American public, only fifteen years removed from the end of WW II, was still inebriated with the idea of the "good war", and naively assumed that all wars we engaged in are for high moral purposes, unsullied by base geo-politics, advantage, or gain. Vietnam opened the eyes of many, even if they have since chosen to avert them. It was generally acknowledged in the reflective days after the fact, that our error lay in too quickly and without due diligence accepting the pseudepigraphic gospel of our political and military leaders. The citizenry was content with domestic tranquility, prosperity, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, while the politicians presided over an 800 pound gorilla seeing no reason to cede differences of opinions to the chimpanzees of the world. History has recorded the results; although apparently only in pencil. Consequently, I feel I am being justifiably rational recognizing glaring, legitimate, and unanswered questions about the events of 9/11 and the supersonic rush to put American troops in harm's way and thus making any inquisition unpatriotic and treasonous subversion of the bravery and vulnerability of our armed forces. The Gulf of Tonkin all over again. But, if no one else will ask the questions, I feel I must. After all, it was the precipitating event for war; no small and inconsequential matter.

We have been told that "Afghanistan is a war of necessity". It has been repeated so often that otherwise thoughtful people never question the validity of the assertion. Left to my own devices I can't state for certain that I fully understand the conclusion. All I actually know is what the government tells me. And after the Gulf of Tonkin I must forever accept that the government can and will deliberately lie, and brazenly send loyal, credulous Americans to die and murder under false pretences. There may be those who say making such a statement is unpatriotic, or worse anti-patriotic. I would defend myself by saying that to believe the Bush Administration "lied" us into invading Iraq, for instance, is not anti-patriotic, it is anti-stupid. The facts speak for themselves and can't be obviated by the preferences of ideology. And if "The Project for a New American Century" document is legitimate and not a concoction of sinister anti-government conspirators, then the wish list of its authors, who became leading figures in the Bush Administration, which included American control of the Caspian region and its natural gas and a new Pearl Harbor-like event to make the public accommodating to the military mobilization required to meet their objective, makes 9/11 one of the most perfect confluences of desire and geo-politics in world history; complete with a perfect shadowy enemy fortuitously situated in the scripted area. Are we to believe, "If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn't", only applies to mail fraud? Remember the Maine!

Before I put in my two cents on Afghanistan I must detour to Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. The other evening I was threatened with a sledge hammer and called a self-hating black person, a secret Republican, and a traitor "to the cause", not only because of my opinion on the prize, but also supposedly gleaned from being "researched on the web", which I assume primarily means entries to this site. I must edit myself more carefully because I didn't know I had, and never intended, to project any of those things.

I can best express my Obama opinion with the following analogy. Let us consider two Roman Emperors, Caligula and Marcus Aurelius, but hold in our consciousnesses that many say the award to Obama is actually an anti-Bush statement. I can understand that many Romans, and the world, would attach a degree of wonderfulness to Aurelius, simply because he isn't Caligula. But even though ideas on ethics and behavior may be percolating inside, I still hold that UNTIL Aurelius actually writes and lives "Meditations"; he is just the 'next' guy. Talk is cheap, unless inflation and the devalued dollar make it worth 1.4 mill. Nonetheless, I have the audacity to hope Mr. Obama will have the courage to be worthy of the honor.