Middle Class Populist

Archive for November, 2006

Well now that George Bush has seen the results of his Iraqi strategy on the once Republican controlled Congress he is trying to find an exit strategy for his own ego. Seems like we have been hearing a chorus of “blame the Iraqi’s” since they have not controlled the militias. This is pure nonsense! Why were those militias allowed to form in the first place? So they could have the Muslim equivalent of street corner Bible study?

Again I repeat from my prior posts, imagine Germany after her defeat in World War II and if we allowed militias to form? The fact is:

• We NEVER had enough troops for the occupation.
• We allowed the militias to form and remain! It is our responsibility for this problem.
• We never did an honest evaluation of our strengths and weaknesses. We are good at high tech “shock and awe”. But we don’t want to commit high troop levels for an occupation unless it is in our national interest. Making such a commitment would require a huge increase in the military budget and perhaps a draft!
• Finally if such an occupation commitment were valid and militias still formed, the solution is simply to place the militia leaders against a wall and shoot them. If we don’t have the stomach to do that then we should never have made the commitment to stay and engage in this neo-con “social engineering experiment”. Oh dear did I offend both the conservatives and liberal PC crowd?

Another reason there is so much turmoil in Iraq is that the Iraqi’s borders have not been secured. But then again what can you expect from George Bush who allows our borders to be wide open and wanted to give our port security over to the United Arab Emirates!

General Abizaid has stated that while we could send an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq we cannot sustain this in the long term as our military resources are being strained. Then why may I ask are staying in Iraq? We beat up Sadamn and enjoyed the endless reruns on the cable channels of our military blitzkrieg. If we had then left it would be a lesson for the more dangerous villains like Iran and North Korea. Now by being dragged down into this occupation our “threat creditability” has been destroyed. No doubt the glorious democratic nations of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates are all behind us to establish a democracy in Iraq.

No nation is omnipotent. We are good at “shock and awe”. Better to use our technology to validly determine if the WMD threat is real before we go to war. Then use our military technology to destroy the economies of enemies rather then get into a protracted occupation. That is unless such an occupation is in the real national interest of the United States. In that case harsh methods must be used and that is an “inconvient truth” the PC crowd will have to face.

Thank God Murtha has lost his bid to become majority leader for the House Democrats. What the hell was Nancy Pelosi thinking when she nominated him. I saw the video on TV of him in the FBI probe. While I did not believe he committed a crime he damn well came close to the edge. Ok that was 26 years ago so I was ready to forgive. Also he did refuse the bribe but did say “at this time”. My only justification for that is that I might say the same thing to put the people who offered the bride off guard until I left and could contact the proper authorities.

But then again I would contact the proper authorities and arrange to GO BACK as an FBI plant. If he had done so, regardless that the whole thing was an undercover sting, he would have emerged as a hero.

But alas this is not what happened. Ok maybe he just wanted to refuse the bride but not get into going back as an FBI plant. He could have been afraid and just wanted to refuse the bribe but no go all the way and fight the bribers being a freshman congressman at the time. It also has been 26 years. But then he just made a statement that ethics reform is “krap”.

With that I have lost all faith in him. Our nation must remove the corrupting influence of lobbyists from our political process and I don’t care which party that hurts. I am a non-PC Democrat. But an American first.

The time has come for all Democrats (and Republicans) to stand up and place America’s values first.

First I do not believe we should be involved in nation building in Iraq. Remember the old notion of the “prime directive” in the series Star Trek? Well just look at the results of pushing democracy prematurely on a society.

• First we have Iran where we stood by and let the Shah get overthrown.
• Next we have Palestine with Hamas now in charge after elections.

While I am a democrat I have pledged that this blog would be a search for the truth no matter where that leads me. I believe we have to set aside conservative – liberal ways of looking at the world. Life gives us more than just two choices. For years we in the middle class have been the hostage of both the democrats and republicans. Let me now present to you some very different ideas concerning Iraq.

Assuming you want to not merely overthrow Saddam but also (and I differ here) commit to nation building in Iraq and thus violate the “prime directive”. What should be your role model for educating Iraqi Society on democracy?

If you are going to set up a “classroom” environment then you MUST make the commitment to treat the occupation of Iraq the same as the occupation of Germany, Italy and Japan. We are the boss you are the student now lets get to work!

Instead Bush made two mistakes: He made the decision to stay in Iraq after no WMD were found. Second, he did not make the commitment to take total charge of the “learning experience” for our Iraqi students.

He treated them to an American inner city classroom experience. No discipline and no order. Bullies run through the school along with drugs. Can you imagine Germany after World War II with partisan militias being allowed to operate freely in the streets?

We hear from some that we must be tough on the new Iraqi government to crack down on the militias! WRONG we should never have allowed these militias to come into existence in the first place! It was our responsibility to set up the learning environment for democracy. Instead we thought our Iraqi students how to provide lip service to education. George Bush can consider a career as an inner city liberal high school administrator after leaving the Presidency!

Bush and his fellow travelers need to learn the lessons of history. Before engaging in this overseas social engineering experiment our government should have made clear goals and taken a self assessment of our strengths and weaknesses. We are great at “shock and awe” but really don’t want to get into nation building unless really needed. Now we have lost the “deterrent” effect of our shock and awe capability as I illustrated in a prior post. Geo-political struggle is not simply brute force vs. brute force. From the days of Alexander The Great generals knew their resources and choose their “battle fields”. Might I suggest Darfur if we want to fight Islamic Fascism Mr. President?

Bush and his fellow travelers did this wrongful occupation on the cheap in order to not cause concerns about a new Vietnam. In the process they have switched occupation role models from post war Germany to Vietnam.

They have switched from creating a solid learning environment for democracy to the liberal role model of an inner city school where bullies, drugs and hopelessness are the result. Oh did I say something wrong? Bush has created the very thing he did not want to create because he closed his eyes. Meanwhile our “other” student that is to say Afghanistan is doing just fine! Lacking the full resources that have been diverted to Iraq instead Afghan opium production is up to 92% of the world’s total.

We can all take great pride Bush is using an American inner city liberal run high school as a role model on a societal level for his “school of democracy”! Great job Mr. President ranks right next to the fantastic job you have done with port security and our nation’s secure borders. The same borders that allow free trade rather than fair trade as America’s middle class sees it’s high paying jobs go out the window. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

The time has come for the SILENT MAJORITY – America’s great middle class (and those who aspire to be) to take our government back.

George Bush has accepted Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation. While the new Defense Secretary nominee sounds like he could do a good job, the problem is what are the “definitions” of our mission.

For example when constructing a political poll you have to be careful what exactly is the question. When you hear generals saying we “don’t need more troops” you have to elicit what is the precise definition of “their mission”. If the “mission” is the successful occupation of a defeated nation using our occupations of Germany, Italy and Japan as role models then I believe the answers these generals would be giving us as regards to required troop strength and projected success with our current resources on the ground would be radically different.

But Bush and his fellow travellers first said “Mission Accomplished” then allowed militias to grow in the vacuum of post war Iraq. Now their “definition” of mission success is a holding action while a “Vietnamization” of the war takes place. Ooops wrong term or is it?

Can you imagine three years after the defeat of Nazi Germany and major cities reverting to enemy hands? Well that is the situation we find ourselves in today.

This is what is meant by “staying the course”. Because Rumsfeld got intoxicated by our superior “shock and awe” military superiority he forgot that this only works on the battle field not in the day to day occupation of a defeated nation.

Rumsfeld’s greatest blunder was to undermine our nation’s punitive threat to other rogue regiemes. The “Dear Leader” of North Korea does not worry so much about democracy being installed in his country by us as much as he fears his regime’s overthrow.

What follows after doesn’t mean anything to Kim il Sung only the continuation of his power! The same is true with Iran’s mullahs. Knowing and defining the enemy’s motivation is important. When our nation stared down the Soviets it was not simply the existence of our nuclear weapons but the perception by the Soviets that:

1. We were willing to use our nuclear weapons if provoked.
2. Our ability to withstand a first strike with enough reserve weapons to then retalliate.

Now consider how Rumsfeld and Bush have diminished the perceived threat capacity of the United States to rogue regimes. Since rogue regimes don’t care a krap for their own people but only the for their regimes continuation what would be the “THREAT POTENTIAL” of the United States under two separate scenarios:

1. We invade and overthrow Sadamm Hussein, do a search of their nation for WMD then turn Iraq over to a new reformed military dictator. Sure we could have him pledge to be “more” democratic but the bottom line is just remove the bad guys. Then we leave over the horrizon. We leave CIA contacts and have the capacity to have a “veto” power over our puppet regime by doing what we do best “shock and awe” without extended occupation. We could always put a new general in power if the first does not behave by staying just over the horizon.
2. We invade as in the first scenario but engage now in extensive nation building. “Victory” now is not simply defined as throwing out the bad guy but now we have to succede in a “social engineering experiment” by establishing a democray. This would take extensive troop levels and resources.

If we had stuck to the first scenario our willingness to repeat it with Iran or North Korea as our target would be very high. Further since the definition of victory under scenario #1 would have been far easier we would be “percieved” as a viable threat to other rogue regiemes. Since these rogue regimes “definition of defeat” is simply their regimes over throw they would be more likely to bow to our wishes rather than arouse our wrath!

Meanwhile Afghanistan is still holding Al Quaeda terrorists and exporting 92% of the worlds opium. With our open borders, ports and airports if we do not fight this threat in Afghanistan then we will fight the opium and the resulting drug terror in our streets. Yet Bush and his fellow travellers seem bent on allowing the new government to be no more than a Kabal City State. Since Afghanistan is where Al Qaeda’s homeland is perhaps it is there that our military action should be concentrated. Not to mention that North Korea has nukes and is developing ICBM’s. Yet we concern our nation more with small grade conventional katusa rockets going 25 miles into northern Israel rather than:

• North Korea with it’s nuclear weapons and their desire to test ICBM’s that can go thousands of miles to hit our homeland.
• Afghanistan with it’s terrorists roots and opium that could finance a dirty bomb in our cities since Bush has not closed our ports, borders and airports.

The time has come for the SILENT MAJORITY – America’s great Middle Class (and those who aspire to be) to take our nation back from these effete snobs of the Republican party. Lets hope that the new Congress will launch a extensive investagation as to why we engaged in this neo-con social engineering experiment while our borders are so insecure and opium and Al Qaeda are so secure still in Afghnaistan.

Today I watched as both George Bush and Nancy Pelosi pledged bi-partisan cooperation. Actually we all know this is pro-forma due to the situation. Our constitution also demands checks and balances. For the democrats to not use their soon to be acquired subpoena power would be a dereliction of duty.

The American people want to know:

· If the decision to go to war was arrived at by legitimate means and motivations.

· How are American tax dollars being spent in Iraq and are they being spent in the manner they are supposed to be used.

· What do the generals believe about the situation and we need this information under oath.

What we need is a “Contract With The Middle Class”. The American people are tired of:

• “Cut and Run Capitalists” who send our jobs overseas and who invest in the enemies of freedom such as communist China. Meanwhile our trade deficit grows while their stock portfolios’ grow fat.
• Free Trade. We need Fair Trade instead.
• Lack of Universal Health Care. If this nation can run half way across the world and engage in Republican Party social engineering experiments in Iraq then we should be able to give our citizens universal health care.
• Our ports, borders and airports being open to terrorists entry while Afganistan raises 92% of the world’s opium crop. What Bush and his fellow travelers don’t seem to realize is that if we don’t fight and win against the terrorists in Afghanistan and in enclaves in Pakistan then with our open borders and ports we will be fighting the terrorists in our cities along with Afghan opium! This very same opium’s sale could be used to finance the terrorists in acquiring WMD.
• The wealthy making out while the Middle Class (and those who aspire to be) not being able to afford to send their children to college.
• K- Street corrupting the political decision process in our government!

The time has come for the SILENT MAJORITY – America’s great middle class (and those who aspire to be) to demand that Congress protect our interest against the interests of the rich.

For the life of me I could never figure out why Senator John Kerry let the Republicans smear him in the last presidential election concerning his war record. But then again he was not my first choice to be the Democratic Party standard bearer. Howard Dean was my favorite but due to the news media bias against him after the “scream thing” he was denied the creditability to present his case by the news media bias against him. God imagine if it were a Republican all the “news media bias” horse shit we would have had to endure.

Anyway back to the Kerry fiasco. His words were not carefully chosen especially considering the way Republicans will use them and he should have weighed his words more carefully as we are not in the 1960′w with the draft, which was what his humor was referring to. But wasn’t he really making fun of our troops? No I don’t believe that at all. I fully understand he was not making fun of our troops. Why?

Unlike George Bush and his fellow travelers Dick Chenney, Donald Rumsfield and Rush Limbaugh, Kerry was a war veteran! Chenney and Rumsfeld never served and Bush did a “CUT AND RUN” from attending his legally mandated National Guard meetings.

Yet the news media never confronts Bush. Oh occasionally they air his old college professor who tells how Bush bragged he got out of serving.

I asked this before and now I will ask this again on this blog.

QUESTION: What is similar to Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction and why?

ANSWER: George Bush’s service record in the National Guard. Like Iraqi WMD neither can be found!

In this era of licentious permissiveness corporations and their fellow travellers CUT AND RUN from their American identity. These pampered effete snobs of Corporate America now change their identity to “Multinational Corporations”, divesting themselves of the nation and society that gave them incorporation, succor and profits! The time has come for the Silent Majority – America’s Middle Class (and those who aspire to be) to rise up and take our nation back! VOTE DEMOCRATIC and take our country back from these effete snobs who send our troops to die in Iraq for their failed social engineering experiments while the war on terror is sidetracked from Afghanistan to Iraq instead.