In the same spirt as this morning’s Pony Party…more great American art! 

Remember…not that you’d be tempted anyway, in this case…

Please don’t rec the pony parties…another will be galluping along soon…

For your afternoon entertainment…truly one of the great moments in American cinema…

And a happy song!

I’m running out of Americana…next week, my favorite angry Marxist poetry (I have lots more of that…)

Oh…gotta add one more…to sort of wash the taste out…the amazing, unforgettable Cab Calloway…

jessical in the house…be excellent to each other…

While most of the sturm and drang about yesterday’s seemingly senseless Senate resolution has focused on implications for war with Iran, a closer look at the text reveals the other agenda of our Parliamentary Putzes – the codification of a long term US military presence in Iraq.

First the text: 

(b) Sense of Senate.–It is the sense of the Senate–

  (1) that the manner in which the United States transitions and structures its military presence in Iraq will have critical long-term consequences for the future of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, in particular with regard to the capability of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to pose a threat to the security of the region, the prospects for democracy for the people of the region, and the health of the global economy;

  (2) that it is a vital national interest of the United States to prevent the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran from turning Shi’a militia extremists in Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force that could serve its interests inside Iraq, including by overwhelming, subverting, or co-opting institutions of the legitimate Government of Iraq;

  (3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;

  (4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies;

  (5) that the United States should designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists, as established under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and initiated under Executive Order 13224; and

  (6) that the Department of the Treasury should act with all possible expediency to complete the listing of those entities targeted under United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1737 and 1747 adopted unanimously on December 23, 2006 and March 24, 2007, respectively.

Not just simply a tantrum against Iran, the Senate resolution is, more importantly, a formal recognition of what many US legislators have long known would be the eventual fallback plan once the Surge inevitably failed: permanent occupation of Iraq.

Plan B: ‘Go Long’.

Following Donald Rumsfeld’s long overdue departure last November, the Pentagon released a study outlining what it believed were our three remain strategic options for Iraq: Go Big, Go Long, or Go Home. 

Of course, they’ve already tried Plan A: Go Big, unsustainably surging their way to higher US and Iraqi casualties with no tangible effect.  And while our Senatorial swooners sure do love a man in uniform, all the bluster they could muster about Move On’s highly charged ad could not hide the fact that the Surge Protector’s triumphal visit to the Hill had already been short circuited by an obvious US power failure on the ground in Iraq.

But if you think that the unqualified failure of the Surge means the Senate is ready to skip Plan B: Go Long and move right to Plan C: Go Home, think again.  As Winston Churchill once said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.” Or, as the dead cowboy might say, “Why stop shooting yourself in the foot when there is still another slug in the chamber?”

  Plan B, here we come.

Pay close attention to the first part of the first paragraph of the Senate resolution:

(1) that the manner in which the United States transitions and structures its military presence in Iraq will have critical long-term consequences for the future of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, in particular with regard to the capability of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to pose a threat to the security of the region, the prospects for democracy for the people of the region, and the health of the global economy;

Notice the wording. The US is going to ‘transition’ its ‘military presence in Iraq’.  Nothing about ‘withdrawal’ of our military presence. Simply a ‘transition’ to a new ‘structure’ in Iraq.  And here’s the kicker: ‘that will have critical long term consequences for the future of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East’. 

Translation:  We’re not getting out of Iraq any time soon.  We’re just pulling back to those shiny new permanent bases strategically situated to protect the Iraqi oil infrastructure.

Also take a look at the fourth paragraph:

(4)to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies;

Oh those sly Senators, sneaking in ‘military’ at the end of the list of ‘instruments’ of US power ‘in Iraq’, a list purposefully ordered by touchy-feeliness to invert the relative importance they place on each (as measured by Treasury expenditures).  Almost makes you think they didn’t want you to notice, huh?

The Great ‘Surge’ Con

It is becoming increasing clear that many in Congress have known all along that the Surge would fail, and that that failure has been specifically designed to pave the way for what the Senators know was the real goal of the General’s September dog and pony show on Capitol Hill.  That is, to sell Plan B: the long term occupation of Iraq. 

Indeed, even while last Summer’s propaganda blitz was gushing Go Big, the transition to Go Long was already well underway.

U.S. military officials here are increasingly envisioning a “post-occupation” troop presence in Iraq that neither maintains current levels nor leads to a complete pullout, but aims for a smaller, longer-term force that would remain in the country for years.

This goal, drawn from recent interviews with more than 20 U.S. military officers and other officials here, including senior commanders, strategists and analysts, remains in the early planning stages.  It is based on officials’ assessment that a sharp drawdown of troops is likely to begin by the middle of next year, with roughly two-thirds of the current force of 150,000 moving out by late 2008 or early 2009. The questions officials are grappling with are not whether the U.S. presence will be cut, but how quickly, to what level and to what purpose.
…

The thinking behind this “post-occupation” force, as one official called it, echoes the core conclusion of a Joint Chiefs of Staff planning group that last fall secretly considered three possible courses in Iraq, which it categorized as “go big,” “go home” and “go long.” The group’s recommendation to reshape the U.S. presence in order to “go long” — to remain in Iraq for years with a smaller force — appears to carry weight in Baghdad, where some of the colonels who led that planning group have been working for Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq since February.

Thus we start to get an inkling of the true reasons for the Surge. While Petraeus has been planning to Go Long since as far back as February, the oil oglers and their Senatorial surrogates see a danger that, once a draw down of US forces begins, the momentum for a complete withdrawal may be irresistible.  Thus the initial need for a preliminary surge to establish a greater presence that could then be pulled back without endangering the entire long term operation.

The group has devised a hybrid plan that combines part of the first option with the second one — “Go Long” — and calls for cutting the U.S. combat presence in favor of a long-term expansion of the training and advisory efforts. Under this mixture of options, which is gaining favor inside the military, the U.S. presence in Iraq, currently about 140,000 troops, would be boosted by 20,000 to 30,000 for a short period, the officials said.

The purpose of the temporary but notable increase, they said, would be twofold: To do as much as possible to curtail sectarian violence, and also to signal to the Iraqi government and public that the shift to a “Go Long” option that aims to eventually cut the U.S. presence is not a disguised form of withdrawal.

Yet another bait and switch con perpetrated on us by our own government.  They pretend we are in to win in Iraq, when all they really want to do is pave the way to stay.  Seen in this light, last Spring’s supplemental authorization of $124 billion makes perfect sense, not as a last chance throw for victory, but as a long term investment in permanent occupation.

(The concern about a runaway troop withdrawal also puts last week’s bizarre Congressional knuckle rap on ‘Move On’ in perspective.  Without a propped-up General Petraeus leading the Big Dig-In, the impetus for complete withdrawal becomes that much more powerful.  So to make the long term Iraq strategy work politically, the warmongers need to preserve Petraeus’ image as a forthright and courageous soldier ‘just doing his job’ – regardless of, or perhaps because of, the fact that the original ‘Go Big but really Go Long’ con was actually the good General’s idea from the get go.)

What about Iran?

At this point you may be asking yourself, ‘after all of the death, destruction and dismay four years of US military presence in Iraq has inflicted on that poor country as well as on our own, how can the warmongers possibly hope to justify to the American people that it is absolutely necessary to keep US troops in Iraq long into the forseeable future?’

And that’s where Iran, the Iago of International Islamic Insurgency, comes in.  According to the Senate, our newest nebulous nemesis seeks to exploit the US’s self-inflicted strategic blunders by:

(2) …turning Shi’a militia extremists in Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force that could serve its interests inside Iraq, including by overwhelming, subverting, or co-opting institutions of the legitimate Government of Iraq.

Notice the analogy to Hezbollah here, a reference not lost on wavering Democratic Senators worried about blowback from a certain powerful DC lobby, should any of them happen to get it into their silly Senatorial heads to vote the ‘wrong way’.

Our (new) mission in Iraq is thus clear:

(3)  to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;

Again Hezbollah makes an appearance, and while Lebanon doesn’t actually border the country we are currently occupying, the threat Hezbollah poses to another non-bordering Middle East country seems, to the Senate at least, a perfectly valid reason to spend billions dollars and thousands of lives on a permanent US military presence in Iraq.

Sections (4), (5), and (6) are more Lieberman variations on the Iran theme, although as Turkana and Armando point out, some of the most offensive notes were cut from this clunker of a composition.

What Now?

The Pentagon did not wait for formal Senate approval of the Go Long strategy to announce, the day before Petraeus’ testimony, that it was building a new permanent base and  six other ‘fortified checkpoints’ on the Iraq-Iran border.

The base, with living quarters for some 200 soldiers, will be built six kilometers (four miles) from the Iranian border and will likely be completed by November, Major Toby Logsdon, the US officer overseeing the project, told the Journal, without giving a location.

The US military also plans to install X-ray machines and explosives-detecting sensors at the Zurbatiya border crossing, the main crossing between Iran and Iraq.

Also planned are six fortified checkpoints on the major highways leading from the Iranian border to Baghdad, to be manned by soldiers from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, according to the Journal.

On August 24 Lynch said some 20 members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards were inside Iraq training Shiite extremists to launch attacks on US and Iraqi security forces.

See that? As few as 20 Iranians inside Iraq are considered justification for locking down every road linking the two countries.  Never mind that the vast majority of US casualties are caused by attacks from Sunni militias ho receive much of their support from other Sunnis in Saudi Arabia and Jordan – two countries which, as LithiumCola points out, General Petraeus conveniently omitted when he testified about sources of Iraqi insurgent support.

Yet even though the Pentagon is going ahead on its own initiative with more brick and mortar bases, the Senate resolution is still important for the continuing viability of the Go Long strategy. Why? Because the House of Representatives, to its credit, is not quite so keen on the idea of US troops taking up long term residence inside Iraq, and recently voted to defeat a GOP amendment that would have permitted funding for permanent bases.

That is why the Senate has to be careful here.  The Senators know that the idea of permanent Iraq bases is not popular with voters, and that to actually mention funding them is bound to create a noisy ruckus with the House. So instead the Senate passes a seemingly innocuous ‘Sense of’ resolution that is a loud shout at Iran but also, and more importantly, a quiet but significant wink to (and test vote for) the Go Long strategy. 

In short, the Senate resolution is formal recognition that the foundation for our permanent occupation of Iraq has begun in earnest, regardless of what the voters, the House, or anyone else has to say.  Iran meanwhile is the distraction that makes it all happen.

(x-posted at Big Orange)

I have this friend. Her name isn’t Mary, but that’s what we’ll call her. I’ve never had a really good friend named Mary, so this will be fun for me.

When I met Mary, her father was the Democratic mayor of the small town we went to school in. We lived on opposite sides of the town, each outside the town limits. There were railroad tracks between our homes, and we often joked about which one of us lived on the ‘wrong’ side. hint: it was me.

Mary and I have been friends for 26 years. When we were teenagers, she was a svelte 5’8″, blonde, a model. We always met lots of boys, had lots of fun, got in lots of trouble. We once dated brothers who looked exactly alike, though not twins. I introduced her to her husband. I taught her how to work with her son’s nebulizer. She has a big mouth; she’s always liked to pick fights, and then have me fight them for her. She makes the snowballs, and I throw them, as my grandmother would say. That’s the heartwarming part. A ‘buddy’ story, of sorts. I gotta warn you, it gets a little ugly here.

Anyway, in the years since Mary’s father was the Democratic mayor of the small town we went to school in, he tried unsuccessfully to run for other local offices. Maybe he got bitter. Maybe he was always bitter, I don’t know. His most recently held public office was as a Republican…yes, Republican…councilman for the same town he was Democratic mayor of, all those years ago. His council term ended last year, and he was not re-elected.

One of the reasons he wasn’t re-elected is that during his term as councilman of the town he was mayor of, all those years ago, he became vehemently anti-immigrant. He didn’t really seem to care about immigrants’ legal status, family situation, or civil rights. He basically tried to legalize racial profiling in the town he was mayor of, all those years ago. And he managed to squeeze through a couple of regulations, mostly regarding ‘abandoned’ cars and cars with out-of-state tags, parked overnight in the town (yes, the same town he was mayor of, all those years ago).

Now, from where I live, I can drive to Pennsylvania in 20 minutes, New Jersey in 15, depending on bridge traffic. I can be in Maryland in half an hour. Out-of-state cars are common. One even drove through my mother’s hedge last year during a snow storm. But that’s a story for another day. Suffice it to say, regulations that amounted to harassment of innocent brown people, as well as innocent car owners of all colors, didn’t make Mary’s father a popular guy in the town he was mayor of, all those years ago.

It was at about this time that Mary, who became involved in anti-immigration and anti-immigrant activities with her father, started picking fights that I didn’t want to finish for her. Wouldn’t finish for her. And the fight she picked this time…well…let’s just say she could have used me. You see, Mary and her husband own a family landscaping business, similar to Castle Rock landscape design. As a matter of fact, they have a contract with the small town where Mary’s father was once mayor. And, right now, that’s the only contract they hold. I don’t know if Mary, or her father, or her husband had the ill-conceived idea to suggest that the local landscapers who employed immigrants should be investigated for their hiring and employment practices. I do know who had the connections to get it done. Surely after hearing a story like this, you can learn from their mistakes and make sure this doesn’t happen to you while you run a business like this. Maybe the jobs got on top of them. But if it was you running it, knowing that creating a weekly schedule of jobs using landscaping software could make this aspect a lot easier for you to manage. We shouldn’t always see failure as a bad thing, as this is how we learn.

I told you the story got ugly. This next part warms some hearts, upsets others. I’m not going to tell you how to feel about it. I’ll only say it’s true, and it worked.

Every single other landscaper in the county where I live, in support of the hardworking legal immigrants on whose backs their livelihoods are made (and not a little bit irritated at having been investigated for their hiring practices), conspired to take turns submitting ridiculously low bids to every- and anyone whom Mary and her husband held a landscaping contract with. They spread out the losses amongst themselves, so none of them suffered too much financially. Mary and her husband, however, were not so lucky.

Always optimistic, Mary and her husband already have their next business venture planned. They’re planning to open an indoor miniature golf course. Plastic-scaping? Eh, who am I to judge? I’ve already been invited to the grand opening party. The grand opening of a business that doesn’t exist yet, to be bought with the profits from the sale of a business they haven’t sold yet. I think Mary might be a little concerned that she’s lost more than her family business….

{….I’m aware that this story is soooo not ready for prime time. I tell it because it is a small story about a big problem where cooperation and sacrifice made a difference. A difference to people for whom it meant a lot. My intention isn’t to ‘out’ Mary, or embarrass her. I just wanted to tell a story about cooperation and sacrifice, making a difference, to people for whom it meant a lot….em}

I’ve heard it said that the ideal political candidate is the individual who neither wants nor needs to hold public office. Instead, the ideal candidate is the individual who serves simply because he or she feels a civic and moral responsibility to do so.

This individual is Dennis Shulman, a Democrat running for New Jersey’s fifth congressional district seat in the United States House of Representatives.

So, who exactly is this ideal candidate? As a longtime student in Dennis’s classes and congregant at his services, I believe I’m in a unique position to answer this question.

Let me begin with some background. First, Dennis is a Harvard-educated, internationally recognized clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. Second, Dennis is a revered and respected ordained rabbi in his New Jersey community. And, to put these facts in proper perspective, Dennis has been blind since childhood.

But this background information, as remarkable as it may be, fails to capture who this man really is. It does not convey Dennis’s fundamental decency, honesty, and integrity. It does not communicate the depth of his wisdom, compassion, and commitment. And it does not speak to the profoundly positive impact Dennis has had on my life, and upon the lives of countless others. Ultimately, mere biographical data is not enough-one must know Dennis to grasp what my words cannot express. 

While I’m only 30-years-old, I’ve lived and experienced enough to know with absolute certainty that human beings like Dennis Shulman are rare in this cynical and broken world of ours.

So, you might be wondering, why on earth would such a good man want to run for congress?

The answer is simple: His conscience dictates it. As a proud American who, in his words, feels “heartbroken and troubled by our recent direction as a nation,” Dennis feels obligated to take action. While writing checks, signing petitions, and attending political rallies is both important and necessary, Dennis feels compelled to do more. Certain in his belief that we as a nation can and must do better, Dennis is choosing to run for the United States House of Representatives. 

As someone who feels utterly disheartened by the corruption, cronyism, cynicism, and lies that are currently debasing and destroying our democracy, I have been waiting and searching, often in desperation, to find a politician that I can believe in and support without reservation. For me, Dennis Shulman is this candidate.

So, if you too are yearning for a candidate that you don’t have to support with one hand on the lever and one hand holding your nose, I tell you that Dennis Shulman is your man.

But don’t take my word for it.

Check Dennis out for yourself and read what others are saying about his unorthodox and inspiring exploratory campaign at Shulman for Congress