The corporate wing of the Democratic Party has completely given up trying to rein in the excesses of the military-intelligence-police-prisons (MIPP) complex. In the 17 years since 1997, the office of the Secretary of Defense(SoD) has been occupied by a Democrat for precisely 18 months. In 1997, President Clinton appointed Republican William Cohen of Maine to be SoD. In 2008, President Obama appointed Bush-consigliere Republican Robert Gates; and in 2013, he appointed e-voting-machine-tainted Republican Chuck Hagel to be SoD.
There is a huge case to be made that the MIPP is a metastasizing cancer on America. But corporate Democrats won't make it. Hell, you can get crucified for making that case right here on DKos. In fact, the response to CIndyCasella's diary convinced me that merely talking about the out-of-control military spending, and the propaganda excuses of the corporate media for that spending, will now draw an actively hostile response.
The more obvious the pro-war media propaganda, the more jesuitical the defenders of it get. We have reached the level of guilt-by-association equal to:
Hitler was a vegetarian; therefore, all vegetarians are Nazis.
Nine months ago, we were at least talking about domestic political and economic issues. Now, all we hear about how we need to double-down on three neocon-approved foreign policy diasasters: ISIS, Libya, and Ukraine. Once again, an open wallet for military adventurism; but no dollars for domestic infrastructure or economic growth. Just the way the neocons like it to be.
Come below the orange riot-gas cloud for a chat about the MIPP cancer.
The meat of what I want to say about the MIPP has to do with foreign policy, but the MIPP is a growing domestic menace. Let me just briefly mention the domestic issues for a reminder of the price paid for letting the DoD be a GOP preserve.
The Domestic Metastases of our Military Cancer
Let's start with the "I" in MIPP. Only thanks to Wikileaks and Edward Snowden does America and the world know the extent of the NSAs massive domestic surveillance, of the illegal vacuuming of literally every keystroke and phone call. This capability was generated out of the pro-war hysteria of 911, but it has grown to be "turnkey totalitarianism", just waiting for the next GOP administration. The revelations have caused massive damage to American high-tech companies, as other countries (like China and Germany) drop Google and Amazon to build spy-free networks of their own.
Movin on to "P", we have the Ferguson debacle, which revealed the result of handing out military weaponry and NSA intelligence gear to racist assholes in police uniforms. This was all laid out before the incident in Radley Balko's must-read The Rise of the Warrior Cop. The police have been militarized, and the people are seen as enemies. Eric Holder has been AG for almost six years, and he is just now waking up to the massive problems in our police forces and prison systems?
Moving to the other "P", we have the school-to-prison pipeline. In the same way that the Ferguson police used selective enforcement to brand the black community as offenders, Charter Schools have hired veterans with minimal teaching skills. The Broad Academy is at the cutting edge of propagandizing these regressive and disruptive practices. These teachers are put into schools of poor children and told to enforce discipline. The result is another road-block to getting out of poverty, when the teachers call police to classrooms over trivial offenses, and fourth graders wind up with a police record that will be used against them later outside of school.
On to Foreign Policy
Appallingly, the neocons are back in charge of foreign policy, led by Kissinger-brown-nosing HRC. Clearly, being a neocon (or, in HRC's case, a crypto-neocon) means never having to pay a political price for being murderously wrong, while always collecting a financial reward for filling the MIPP order books. (A political contribution is by definition a financial reward.)
HRC is the darling of the corporate democrats; and she is also the darling of the neocons. It was HRC who tried mightily to get us involved in the Syrian civil war. It was HRC who appointed the horrific neocon, Victoria (Fuck the EU) Nuland, to her State Department posts.
Now, I will give Obama points for being intelligent about this. "Don't do stupid stuff." is a readily quotable statement of exactly what has always been wrong about the neocon approach. (It's in the same vein as Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn Rule".) But, because the corporate Democrats have ceded the DoD to the GOP for the last twenty years, the only expert voices we have on this topic are disenchanted military retirees like General Zinni or Colonel Bacevich. (Have you heard one word from Leon Panetta, the faceless Democratic bureaucrat who held the SoD post for 18 months?) Even though the military itself produced a study saying that the defense budget was having a negative effect on the US economy, no Democrat of any stature was willing to really use that study in a political manner - not even Obama.
The Saudi-sponsored ISIS debacle
It is well-known that ISIS is the creation of Saudi Arabia, whose rulers belong to the fanatical fundamentalist Wahabist sect of Sunni Islam. The original intention of ISIS was to depose the Alawite (Shia) President of Syria, Bashir Assad. But, when Assad proved to hard to topple, the IS struck a deal with Assad (they sell him oil) and branched out Iraq.
It is also well-known that the Shia politician that Bush saw elected president, Mr. Maliki, was massively biased against the Sunnis. So, ISIS hooked up with disaffected Sunnis, who used to run Iraq under Saddam.
Now the US is in the middle of a dilemma. It cannot be seen to chose between Shia and Sunni. That would be taking sides in the middle of a religious war. Instead, we hide behind proxies like the Kurds or the Yazidis - using their welfare as our excuse for intervention. Meanwhile, one day Iran is our ally; the next day it is a nuclear menace. We can't keep the story straight.
What a cluster fuck. We are caught in the middle of a thousand-year-old religious battle because oil. And, instead of using the increased production of domestic oil from fracking to extricate ourselves from the volatile Middle East, we are using it as a reason we can afford to be more belligerent around the world. That is pure neocon logic.
There seems to be no hornet's nest, anywhere in the world that the US is not willing to kick over. Of course having 700+ military bases around the world does produce that "to a man with a hammer, everything..." reflex to start shooting/bombing ASAP. See "McCain, John" on MTP every week.
Meantime, there are hysterical worries that ISIS will commit terrorism in the "homeland". Well, excuse me, but we have paid probably $1 Trillion over the last 13 years to build up strong defenses; and now I'm told we have to spend more money? I'm told that these guys are a threat to the U.S. mainland? Give me a break. It is all more corporate media pro-war hysteria.
Ukraine - another centuries-old mess we should avoid
Facts are very thin in the corporate media propaganda on Ukraine. You might think it would be useful to look at a fucking map:
This map shows the Ukraine is a huge country, larger than Poland or Germany in land area. It is larger than Belarus which, given its location between Poland and Russia, is sensibly neutral. Ukraine is 800 miles along its west-east axis. The Western end used to be part of Austria-Hungary. The Eastern end used to be part of Czarist Russia.
That brings me to another fact. This "country" has history with a capital "h". It has been stomped on by half of Europe for the last five hundred years. Here is a description of the region in the late 1800s:
'Austria was a Slav house with a German facade'. In practice, the three 'master races' - the Germans, Magyars, and Galician Poles - were encouraged to lord it over the others. The administrative structures were so tailored that...the Poles in Galicia could hold down the Ruthenians (Ukrainians)...The Ukranians lived under two 'Eastern autocracies'. Once subjects of Poland, they were now subjects either of Russia or of Austria.
- Norman Davies, Europe - A History
Here is a description of its situation in the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920:
Ukraine...constituted one of the most valuable prizes; eleven armies took to the field. The forces of the Ukrainian Republic were divided between the supporters of the initial Rada or "National Council" and those of the subsequent Directory. The German army of occupation on the Eastern Front had stayed on until February 1919 in order to give aid to Ukraine's independence. The "Red Army" of the Ukraine had strong backing among Russian workers in the Donbass region... General Denikin's "Russian Volunteer Army", backed by a French force, landed in Odessa; its' successor, Baron Wrangel's "White Army", camped in Crimea. Pilsudski's Polish army defeated the forces of the West Ukrainian Republic in early 1919, before advancing on Kiev in April 1920, in alliance with the Ukrainian Directory. The peasant guerillas of the anarchist, Nestor Makhno, took over a broad region of central Ukraine. The Ukrainian capital, Kiev, changed hands fifteen times in two years.
- N. Davies, Europe
The ethnic wrangling continued up to and through World War 2, and included the formation of a Waffen-SS division of Ukrainians:
After World War I and the dissolution of Austria–Hungary, the territory of Eastern Galicia, populated by a Ukrainian majority but with a large Polish minority, was incorporated into Poland following the Polish–Ukrainian War. Between the wars, the political allegiances of Ukrainians in eastern Galicia were divided between moderate national democrats and the more radical Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The latter group itself splintered into two factions, the more moderate OUN-M led by Andriy Melnyk with close ties to German intelligence (Abwehr), and the more radical OUN-B led by Stepan Bandera. When Poland was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union under the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, the territory of eastern Galicia was annexed to Soviet Ukraine. In 1941 it was occupied by Germany.
The creation of 14th Voluntary Division SS Galizien was announced in April 1943...The terms "Ukrainian", "Ukraine", could not be used when addressing the division, stressing the Imperial Austro-Hungarian heritage of the term "Galizien"...The Division enjoyed support from multiple political and religious groups within the western Ukrainian community.
- Wikipedia SS-Galizein Division
This is the mess we are sticking our nose into. Ukraine is a bigger version of Yugoslavia - a polyglot mess of ancient hatreds, held together from the top by brutal Communist repression of ethnic fighting. When the Soviet Union fell, the demagogues started polarizing Ukraine -with no small help from the US-backed Color Revolutions. Now we are seeing battles in cities that saw the same battles a century ago, but the corporate media have no time to educate people about that.
How many times has the neo-nazi posturing and attitudes (untermensch) of the Ukrainian Right Sector been minimized? I'm sorry. It is not even a bad joke to pretend neo-naziism is not a problem in Eastern Europe. Hungary, which shares a border with Western Ukraine is a neo-fascist regime. Here's a take from (what I can gather - corrections accepted - is) a right -wing blog:
Only a few days ago, prime minister Viktor Orban officially decorated three extreme right-wing leading figures: journalist Ferenc Szaniszlo, known for his diatribes against the Jews and the Roma people, who he compares to "monkeys"; anti-Semitic archaeologist Kornel Bakav, who blames the Jews for having organized the slave trade in the Middle-Age; finally, "artist" Petras Janos, who proudly claims his proximity to the Jobbik and its paramilitary militia, responsible for several racist murders of Romani people and heiress of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party, that organised the extermination of Jews and Gypsies during the Second World War.
-Has Fascism Landed in Hungary?
Just asking
So, tell me again why we keep inserting our military into places whose political landscapes are schizophrenic nightmares? And then, why do we pick the most loathsome, authoritarian leaders as "our guy"? The Ukraine is that all over again. Dealing with ISIS is that all over again.
Of course, the answer is OIL and looting. The Ukraine may have frackable oil. It definitely has lootable public resources, which the IMF and ECB will be happy to steal, the same way they looted Greece. Iraq is a huge oil producer; and so is Iran.
America has become Rome. The MIPP are our legions and police forces. Like Crassus's fire department, they are not above starting blazes that they then offer to put out - for a stiff price. The MIPP having conquered, the oil companies then loot the most valuable commodity on the planet; and Wall St. steals all the money. That is who we are these days. It sucks.