Let Dubai Do It: Dubya Ports Plan Is Brilliant

     I think it's too bad that Dubya is in such trouble on so many fronts that no one recognizes the potential brilliance of his Administration's hand-the-ports-over-to-the-Arabs gambit.
     I mean, think about it: Actually securing all our ports and stuff would require the expenditure of real money here at home, where it wouldn't be anywhere near as easy for it to be something-for-nothing diverted to the arms-and-oil magnates Dubya proudly calls his "base." That's why it hasn't been done. Feeding-your-friendswise, it's been much more efficient to pour kabillions into the phony war and phony reconstruction in Iraq, a rathole beyond the reach of rational accounting practices.
     (F'rinstance, even after receiving news that virtually none of the money spent on "reconstruction" has benefited anyone but arms manufacturers, mercenaries. outright grafters and well-connected US contractors, Congress is still so terrified of looking unpatriotic that it keeps writing blank checks for $80-120 billion "special" war approprations ever few months. Yet, here at home, we inspect fewer than 5 percent of incoming shipping containers -- alleged prime habitat for nukes, bioweapons and anti-aircaft missiles -- for lack of less than $200 million.)
     Now, perhaps it was just sheer, absentminded greed: "What? Families of Arab oil sheiks wanna buy our port contracts? Hey, they know who their friends are..." Never stopping to think that Wild West, anything-goes boomtown Dubai -- and in particular, Dubai's shipping industry -- is (according to the CIA Factbook and other reputable sources) a major "drug transshipment point," a hotbed for "money laundering," a major racketeering center, etc.. Just the kind of place terrorists find so useful! And so convenient for exceedingly angry, Saudi-connected Wahhabi Muslims who hate sin-rich Dubai almost as much as they hate the Great Satan. The kind of non-Iraqi guys who were on those 9/11 planes.
     All this might seem problematical, if you thought about, it and perhaps the Bush folk just didn't think.
     But then, maybe they
     Maybe, being nominally Americans, as opposed to sole-loyalty citizens of My Capital 'Tis of Thee, they've actually worried a little about how to provide better homeland security -- without, of course, using up money they want to spend way over in Iraq, where we can't actually watch it being wasted.
     And finally, somebody on Rove's staff got an idea: GIVE THE PORT BUSINESS TO THE ARABS! Make 'em think twice about killing a cash cow! Who wants to sacrifice anything as cushy as port shipping revenues (can you say "skim"?) by allowing their bin Laden cousins to blow off a little anti-infidel steam?
     Yessir, next time Osama writes home for more cash and some suicide boyos to deliver a container full of radioactive botox to the Miami Port Authority terminal, our vigilant port contract holders in Dubai will suggest he do something useful, like dynamite a Swiss Yoplait factory or slip Pervez Musharaff a whopee cushion. Talk about pre-emption! This could be the greatest thing to happen to America's sense of security since Al Haig reassured us that he was "in charge." Whew!
     And hey, if the Arab radicals just really, really need to blow us up again, and/or if there's unaccountable resistance to the election of Uncle Dick in 2008, well, at least the right people will be in the right places to ensure an efficient incident...
     Yours in peace through superior fraud,

--- HistoryBuff

A Crisis of Republican Faith

PH readers: A great group of guys in this northern New England 'hood, ranging in their politics from Attila to Tinkerbelle, carries on a sporadic, satirical public-policy debate by e-mail. The resident GOP-right-or-wrong booster -- let's call him "Pete" -- takes perverse delight in admitting GWB's a moral idiot and many of his policies disasters, yet crowing that GOP rule is a blessing that's here to stay. His latest missive, urging all us worried types to relax and enjoy "39 more months" of Bush-league government, prompted this farrago from yours truly. Since a number of folks have asked if they could forward it, I figured it belonged on this neglected blog.
Dear Pete,
     As you know, you have long since converted me to Republican wisdom. Nothing in my life has been so liberating, spiritually or financially, as the Christian right's discovery that commie-pinko clerics have deliberately mistranslated Christ's words for the last 2,000 years. Who would have suspected that "Love thy neighbor" actually meant "Fuck thy neighbor"? But it makes so much more sense! I mean, how could anyone live by that elitist riddle? The GOP gospel's so easily accessible, it's no wonder even our charity-C student, drug-addled future Bedwetter-In-Chief got religion!
     But Pete, every time I settle into not worrying and being happy, you come along and rattle my comfortable cage with some inadvertently terrifying factoid. Like, "another 39 months" of Dubya? Thirty-fucking-nine?
     Holy shit, Pete. I mean, I'm trying to be a good Republican, to skip thinking and just believe, but I can't help remembering that in much fewer than 48 months, the Great Unificator and his pals not only managed to ignore the loudest signals of incoming attack since those midget subs appeared in Pearl Harbor, but then turned the 9/11 tragedy into a nonstop economic tailspin, the excuse for two utterly botched, ruinously expensive and unending wars, and the passage of laws more restrictive of citizens' rights than any seen since the Palmer Raids. Now we have more enemies abroad than we could ever have imagined, and our rep as the world's bastion of freedom is about as legit as the writs by which we run a low-intensity, no-legality torture chamber in Guantanamo Bay.
     And heck, then I couldn't help thinking that the Adminstration repeated the same performance by ignoring the Katrina warnings, exhibiting the neocons' usual disdain for learning from experience and for useful planning (as opposed to warmongering, ideological mouthing-off and making sure their campaign contributors have plenty of White House office space in which to write energy legislation). They helped turn a big chunk of the USA into an unnecessarily dangerous and economically dead-in-the-water disaster area--- unless, of course, you work for KBR et al, who are now looting the American treasury on our own soil, where once they had to go all the inconvenient way to Iraq.
     And speaking of money, sometimes I worry about the way liberating the rich from unfair taxation -- and let's face it, all taxation of rich people is unfair; tax the poor, those parasites! -- is dooming any chance of balancing the budget into the imaginable future. This is the same mess Ronnie got into, only we're not outspending the Russkies to win the Cold War. We're just outspending ourselves! I mean, I know this is somehow a good thing, but then I remember that we didn't get a balanced budget until the Clinton years, when taxes were raised to reasonable levels, services were secure and everyone got plenty rich anyway...
     You see my problem? I mean, in way less than four years (including record-breaking vacation time), Dubya and Co. more or less freaking positioned the country to be the world's next great bankrupt oligarchy -- sort of a SuperMexico. And while I know that this is God's will, sometimes I get a little scared.
     I mean, give these guys 39 more months and we could be at war with China or Iran or DisneyWorld or Spanish Harlem or Mars. Screw ANWR: We could be boiling whale blubber for lamp oil. We could be keeping every vegetative accident victim in the world on million-dollar-a-year perpetual life support and forcing every pregnant 14-year-old to carry to term a child who'll never know Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, WIC, adequately funded public schools, unemployment benefits, student loans, verifiable voting, separation of church and state, checks and balances in government, or a time when chumps like Harriet Miers never got near the Supreme Court and America was ashamed of the word "empire."
     Not that any of these are necessarily bad things, you know, but gee... I guess I'll have to go study my Revised Conservative Bible a little more. I always get cheered up when Jesus says, "This above all: Screw they neighbor, not thyself." But then I read on and notice that, even in this version, the guys who nail Him up aren't horn-headed, alien Jews. They're regular-guy soldiers of empire, doing what empires always do...
     Awaiting your get-happy guidance,
     Bill

--- HistoryBuff

Concerned Over the I-91 Checkpoint?

If you're concerned about racial profiling, political scare theater and pork-barrel spending at the Border Patrol checkpoint on I-91 in Hartford, Vermont -- 100 miles from the Canadian border -- you're not alone! I've created a new site, StopTheCheckpoint.Com, as a rallying point for a spring/summer 2005 campaign to make sure this bad idea never gets the $9 million the agency seeks to make it permanent. The site contains links to more information. Here on PreemptiveHindsight, you can read my recent Boston Globe op-ed.
The checkpoint has been cutting back on hours lately, perhaps in repsonse to bad publicity that even included Newt Gingrich calling it a "stupid" idea! But it might just be hoping we'll think it's gone away--- while that $9 million appropriation is still actively under consideration! Let's get together and shut it down. Thanks!

--- HistoryBuff

Annoying, Obstructive, Utterly Essential: Why We Should Cherish The Filibuster

     A lot of people see the filibuster as another antique oddity, like the Electoral College -- or your appendix -- that ought to come out. But there are very important differences between the two. While the Electoral College is a Constitutional glitch that doesn't work as intended and actually discourages democratic participation, the filibuster is a carefully constructed rule that, despite appearances, actually makes the Senate work the Framers' will.
     The filibuster is essentially a braking mechanism. It has been used by the forces of reaction (as opposed to progress) in the past, most notably when Southern senators filibustered Civil Rights legislation. But that case points out that the filibuster is not a veto on change, but only a brake on it; it's a rule that evolved to ensure that the Senate would be the slow-percolating, let's-think-this-over chamber that the Founders intended as a check to the designed-in quick responsiveness of the House.
     During the Civil Rights struggle, the filibuster expressed many Southerners' fear of desegregation, the black vote, etc., but it couldn't stop positive change, because in the end the filibustering delay only made the American people's will toward positive change more evident.
     In the present case, the radical Republicans know that the great majority of Americans are NOT behind them in pushing ultraconservative judges. They know that the delay of filibustering would only expose the narrowness of their political base. In issues without 9/11 scare tactics attached, such as right-wing judges and Social Secuity, these guys are in trouble-- and they know it.
     The filibuster helps make the Senate what it is: a body that moves slowly enough to encourage consideration of minority concerns, and to discourage both the long-term tyranny of majorities and the hasty tactics by which powerfully backed minorites -- such as the GOP's current radical wing -- can exploit national emergencies to effect profound and detrimental changes to our way of life.
     When trying to asses the filibuster's usefulness and legitimacy, it's helpful to compare its history and origins with those of the Electoral College.
     The Electoral College was a fundamental error in the Founders' scheme. It didn't work well from the start, since it was incapable of coping with party politics, and needed almost immediate amendment -- the 12th Amendment, to be exact -- to make it somewhat workable. (It could not be got rid of entirely, as some politicians were in agreement with the essentially elitist, anti-one man/one vote thinking behind its creation.)
     The College has only caused trouble ever since. While some try to explain its potential to overturn the popular vote as the Framers' designed-in check to regionalism or party feeling or what-have-you, history contradicts such postdated rationales. What's more, the Electoral College has only overruled the popular vote in cases of outright election fraud -- or, to describe the Supreme Court's 2000 appointment of George W. Bush more politely, extreme interventions and manipulations. It is indeed an arcane and dangerous institution, one that we need to abolish before it does the country still more damage.
     The filibuster, on the other hand, is (like the 12th Amendment) a patch devised to correct some of the Constitution's weaknesses. The Founders intended the Senate as a go-slow chamber, but it wasn't slow enough, as designed, to represent minority opinion and make all sides feel they'd at least been heard --- which is a crucial function of legislative bodies, if countries are going to stay in one piece.
     It's worth emphasizing that point: If large minorities feel they have no voice in a system, history shows that the results -- political and social polarization, violent dissent, even civil war and revolution -- are far worse than the frustrations of, say, having one's Civil Rights bills or nominees filibustered.
     The filibuster is, in essence, a free society's acknowledgment that free debate on issues of extreme importance should not be suppressed for convenience's sake or at power's pleasure.
     Some tradition or rule of delaying action is found in many legislatures: South Korean politicians, for example, dramatize their opposition by "cow walking" to the podium with infinite slowness.
     The gabby American style was given official form by a rules change in 1806. Further changes limited its use, but few historians see these changes as failed attempts to eradicate the filibuster; rather, they were refinements to an important rule that most politicians in both parties wanted to preserve. The filibuster has survived for almost 200 years, through numerous crises, because -- up until now -- a majority of senators cherished the tradition of free speech even more than they honored party ideology or loyalty.
     In other words, the filibuster is not (like the Electoral College) a mistaken holdover, but a painstakingly evolved solution that makes our often brutally winner-take-all system MORE representative, not less.
     Here's my analogy: The Electoral College is like the Jim Crow (and still more antique) laws that restricted representation in our system to elites; the filibuster is like the Civil Rights laws that ensure that even our minorities have a chance to represent themselves powerfully (if not always successfully).
     Thus, getting rid of the filibuster isn't like doing away with the "arcane" Electoral College: It's like getting rid of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
     I know, I know: That sounds melodramatic. We have strong emotional ties to the Voting Rights Act, and its achievements seem much greater than the annoying, unlovable filibuster's. But it's only an analogy, not an exact comparison, and with that proviso I'll say it again: The filibuster is the Senate's own Voting Rights Act. We mustn't let it go.

--- HistoryBuff

Pat Robertson: "'Activist' Judges More Dangerous Than Osama, Hitler and Tojo"

    OK, I admit it. I've always detested Pat Robertson. After my sister died of AIDS, then-presidential hopeful Pat came to New Hampshire, his campaign rhetoric including the novel ideas that God was using AIDS to punish sinners
and that the disease could be spread through the air. I thought of a lot of things I would have liked to do or say to the reverend, but when I met him in the course of my work as a journalist, I treated him with professional restraint -- and, frankly, with Christian pity for his vicious self-righteousness.
        Well, as you may have noticed by now, the Republican fundamentalist far right has long since stopped excercising any discernible restraint whatsoever. From lying about WMDs to get scores of thousands of Iraqis and more than 1500 Americans killed in a war for strategic control of oil, to "outing" a CIA undercover agent to punish dissent, and from legalizing torture to dancing a political jig with Terry Schiavo's corpse, they've given us plenty of reason to believe there isn't much they wouldn't say or do to achieve their ends.
        And now comes the Rev. Pat to articulate the party line on "activist judges." (That's the current GOP term of art for judges who do not agree with torture; who uphold a spouse's right to make decisions for a terminally ill partner; who support laws restricting corporate rape of the environment; and who aren't impressed with the need to teach fundamentalist "creation science" in our schools.) On Sunday morning, the old Christian Coalition co-founder told TV viewers nationwide that the threat posed by liberal federal judges is "probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings."
     Yeah, you read that right.
     And I know it's shocking. But, admit it: You're not really surprised. It was only a matter of time before the far right got around to equating their domestic opposition with Al-Qaeda. Hey, if it worked for the Iraq War, why not try it at home? And by the way, when (on that same show) George Stephanopoulos asked if Robertson really believed that these judges posed "the most serious threat America has faced in nearly 400 years of history, more serious than al Qaeda, more serious than Nazi Germany and Japan, more serious than the Civil War?," the Reverend responded, "George, I really believe that." (Check it out at http://mediamatters.org/items/200505020003.)
     Now, this would be amusing, in a Billy Sunday kind of way, if it weren't a fact that Robertson's Christian Coalition is absolutely in synch with the dark heart of the religious right/megabusiness partnership that is the party of the Bush Administration, the Frist Senate and the DeLay House. What he says is what they want. If the preacher gets away with saying it, the pols will join in. (DeLay has already made statements almost as inflammatory.) It seems a safe bet that the rhetoric of intolerance and incitement may rise to a level we haven't known since the McCarthy Era----- and then get worse.
     And it's all happening, not to suit the people who believe the Earth is flat, but because megabusiness has learned to use the religious right to make its dreams come true. Believe me, Dick Cheney doesn't care whether American kids are taught "creation science," but he and his real, true friends are thrilled at the thought of an end to filibusters, of federal courts packed with judges who abhor environmental protections and workers' rights. The Reverend Pat may or may not sincerely believe this is all about God, but don't be fooled: This "crisis" of the "activist judges" is all about money. It's about laws and rights that get in the way of money being made. It's about ungodly greed.
     So... What are we going to do? Well, obviously, your representatives and the White House need a phone call or an e-mail from you. But I'm pleased to see that moveon.org has a clever strategy that you can aid with just a few clicks. Get on over to http://www.moveonpac.org/robertson/ (paste that address in your browser, or just click on it, if your e-mail program highlights it) and add your name to a petition demanding that Sen Bill Frist and Rep. Tom Delay publicly condem Robertson's comments and stop intimidating judges.
     In other words, force them to act like Americans, like statesmen. Like rational adults.
     As for the Reverend Pat, well, what can you say about a guy who makes Pat Buchanan seem both credible and likable?
     Just pray for him, friends. Thanks for reading. Yours in action and love for this country, Bill

--- HistoryBuff

Fighting (And Losing) The Last War...In Bunny Slippers, No Less

    It occurred to me --- as I untied my hiking boots in the airport so they could pass through an x-ray machine in order to add yet another layer of spurious safety to the mass illusion known as "Homeland Security" --- that I was fighting the last war.
        You know, as in that old axiom of futility, "Generals are always planning to fight the last war"?
    In the 1930s, the generals of France were preparing to fight the battles of 1914-1918. In the 1910s, they were preparing to refight the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. And when American generals squared off for the Civil War, the big shots were hooked on the doctrines of Napoleon and Jomini.
    And so it goes, back to the first hominid who was counting on teeth and claws -- until his opponent picked up a rock.
    America, the battle of the Shoe Bomber is over. Al-Qaeda is as likely to send over another sneaker attack as it is to buy tickets for another five Arabic-looking guys with box cutters. It's not likely to send another tender full of kaboom out to a U.S. Navy vessel in a Yemeni port, either.
    Strangely enough, Japan didn't spend the rest of WWII trying to sneak up on Hawaii, either.
    In fact, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 have something in common besides the obvious: Both were the opening gambits of limited-objective wars.
    Japan didn't imagine it could "conquer" America, any more than Al-Qaeda imagined that 9/11 would "defeat" us. Japan's war planners hoped to sink enough of America's Pacific fleet to buy many months' grace for its occupation and fortification of oil-rich Southeast Asia. They gambled that, by the time we were ready to strike back, their position would be too strong to make war worth our while.
    They gambled wrong.
    Osama and company's 9/11 objective was not to conquer America -- as if! -- but to reap tremendous political profit in the Muslim world. Al-Qaeda bet that America's overkill response would galvanize anti-imperialist, anti-Western elements from Algiers to Sarawak.
    They bet right.
    End of war.
    That's right. In a limited war, the player who achieves his war aims and is alive to tell the tale is the winner. Al-Qaeda got what it wanted (i.e., a hell of a lot of publicity and recruiting momentum) and we didn't. (We didn't get Osama, we didn't get all the Taliban, we didn't get a stable Afghanistan --- hell, we didn't even get to keep our allies' sympathy.)
    War is an instrument of policy, and unless you are so cynical as to believe that neocons in the Bush Administration knew of and welcomed a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil (as an answer to the prayers of the Project for a New American Century) you have to concede that the "War of 9/11" --- including the Battle of the Shoe Bomb -- is a done deal. The Bush Administration certainly thought so, as it settled for far less than Osama's head on a pike and started a brand-new war of its own.
    It's worth noting that the essential strategy of terror/guerrilla warfare is to tie up maximal amounts of your enemy's manpower, wealth, resources and strength-of-morale at minimal effort and cost.
    I got dizzy, waiting for my shoes to be screened, when I tried to calculate the extra hours expended by all the Americans who would have to arrive hours early and wait in airport lines that day so they could give up their toenail clippers and penknives (while the smokers among them were permitted to carry on high-tech lighters that would have made Richard Reid a successful martyr). My head swam, imagining the sky-high stack of dollars being spent on airport security measures and forces -- not to mention on Homeland Security pork projects like far-from-the-border Border Patrol stations and infrared goggles for the East Nowheresville Volunteer Fire Department -- that aren't doing a thing to protect us against the next war.
    But individual Americans, I noticed, are often more flexible and foresightful than their leaders. The man in the picture, glimpsed in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport, had embraced the Transportation Safety Administration's recommendation that air travelers wear slip-on footgear. Since we're forced to facilitate our own full-body frisking, why stop with shoes? Like Americans everywhere who'd happily surrender a few "rights" to score some "security," he's ready to slip out of something more comfortable...

--- HistoryBuff

More On Border Patrol's 'Whiteness Checkpoint': NY Public Radio

    Pat Bradley of Albany-based WAMC, Northeast Public Radio, reported today on growing opposition to the proposed permanent Border Patrol presence in Hartford, Vt. (see earlier post, ‘The Whiteness Checkpoint’). Here’s a link to an MP3, which includes a soundbite from yours truly.

--- HistoryBuff