There's a video game, not unlike many of the first person shooters, called America's Army. You fight in military formation, you kill terrorists, you get points. It's very popular, and has made its makers a lot of money. Except that this video game was made by the Pentagon to boost recruiting, and it's working great. An informal Army study of the same year showed that 4 out of 100 new recruits in Ft. Benning, Georgia, credit "America's Army" as the primary factor in convincing them to join the military. Sixty percent of those recruits surveyed said they played the game more than five times a week. And a 2004 Army survey found that nearly a third of young Americans aged 16 to 24 had some contact with the game in the previous six months. It also might be a violation of international treaty obligations, at least according to the ACLU, but I'm pretty sure those are non-binding on the US because of the awesomeness of this country.

More on juvenile militarism after the flip.  

A major part of the surge strategy is that the Iraqi government pass certain legislation that is supposed to produce national reconciliation amidst the newfound security.  Some of those laws got passed, others stalled, as a result of a contining standoff between the US backed parties, and this is the big news in Iraq right now, not Obama's visit or the empty promises of the colonial masters.

Follow me after the flip for Byzantine, or rather Babylonian, intrigue and machination.

As many of you probably know, the war in Afghanistan is not going so good. There are many reasons for this, from the low numbers of occupation forces, to the nearly complete lack of understanding of the culture, to the insurgent safe havens across the Pakistan border.

Sadly, Republicans and Democrats have settled on a nearly identical response to the problem. At least 2 new brigades will be sent, with more funds, more cross border operations into Pakistan, and a general browbeating diplomatic offensive will take place in the region. But it is not too late to launch a diplomatic push where it would actually make a difference - with the Taliban themselves. We need to try to understand the local culture and work within it to get al Qaeda, which is as foreign to the region as we are, out, and then get out ourselves.

McCain's Vietnamese captor from the Hanoi Hilton, and future press secretary, has just endorsed him for President.

The endorsement seems to be based less on political principles than on a personal affinity between two old torture deniers.

I guess Obama's not the only one receiving unprompted endorsements from evil foreigners.

More after the flip.

I've been following the expansioin of the war in Afghanistan into Pakistani territory. To recap briefly, Pakistan held elections, and the newly elected national and regional government in the frontier provinces won on a pledge to talk to and make peace with the tribesmen in Pakistan's frontier provinces bordering Afghanistan.  Pakistan has no further intention of killing its own citizens to pleae the US, and, predictably, the US is reacting violently.

Last week a major incursion and air strikes took place into the Pakistan border region, with 11 Pakistani Frontier Corps soliders killed in US airstrikes. The US is still denying this, but at the same time, US puppet Karzai just issued threats to cross the border with the Afghan Army and target Batullah Mehsud, the top Pakistani Taliban leader, and the US launched another strike into Pakistani terrotory, targetting Batullah, while the British have confirmed a large expandion of their Special Forces operations in Pakistani terrority. The sound you are hearing is the US being sucked into a major escalation of conflict with a nuclear Muslim power.

Read on for the Apocalypse Now update.    

I wrote a diary earlier this week about the disputed killing of Pakistani soldiers by a US military air strike in Pakistani territory. At that time, we were only a day out and many conflicting versions were floating around, a few from each side.

Since then, it has become quite clear that the US has embarked on a course of military coercion if not confrontation of Pakistani forces in the Afghan border region, and Pakistan is reacting with outrage. What's more, it is become very clear that the entire frontier region, on both sides of the border, is now fighting as one against the American invasion. While Iraq continues to grab the world's attention, it will be in Afghanistan, as always, where the empire's sword is broken.

Follow me after the flip to hear more muddled tales of a cross border insurgency that knows no end and no beginning.

I have argued before, vehemently and without success, that the Democratic commitment to the continued occupation in Afghanistan, is as criminal as the Republican commitment to the occupation in Iraq. The only difference that I can see is that we had a better excuse to go into Afghanistan, and we are apparently sticking to it after 7 years of a counterproductive occupation.

Today this occupation showed signs of expanding into a cross-border war along the lines of the expansion of US operations during the Vietnam War into Laos and Cambodia. With the exception that instead of Laos, we are expanding the war into nuclear armed Pakistan.

Follow me after the fold for some Great Game fun.

On this coming Memorial Day, I'm sure we'll see a lot of diaries about how terrible the Iraq War is, how the Bush Administration is a bunch of criminals, what a bastard Bush is for giving up golf, etc. But what we won't see on this site are diaries about how terrible the overall US policy of maintaing a standing army and engaging in systematic wars of aggression, such as Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, and so on and on into history. Below is a little incomplete list of various major US military campaigns demonstrating the pattarn of aggression and atrocity exhibited by the US.

I call this day, as I have done before, with little success, for a new focus on what the people's, not the politicians' resposibility is for these wars. Why is it at this point in our history, with all we know about what the military has been used to do in the past, that it is still considered heroic for young men and women to become mercenaries ready to kill for any reason when ordered in any corner of the globe, ready to occupy, ready to imprison, ready to bomb civilian populations, ready to torture and interrogate? Why is this seen as heroic? We need to intverne, we need to educate, we need to oppose to prevent the willing transformation of our fellow citizens into killers.

As the American left continues to loudly, if ineffectively, call for a withdrawal from Iraq, complaining about the lack of progress, the quagmire, the losses of American lives and treasure, the counterproductive conduct of the war which only serves to recruit more terrorists, there is another war raging, a war that has gone on longer with Iraq and with arguably even more pitiful results, as ever widening sections of the country are lost to the insurgent enemy. But this war is the Good War, this is the war we were entitled to fight after 9/11, and a war that the Left wants to see carry through to the winning end. Both Obama and Clinton have pledged to increase our troop presence there, to punish Pakistan for not attacking the bad guys on their side aggressively enough, and to launch unilateral strikes against Pakistan to target cross border Taliban camps. The result is an oxymoron, an anti-war movement that is actually gung ho about one ongoing war even while it claims to oppose another.

What is the reason for this discrepancy and is it justified?

In an interview with Qatar's Al-Watan newspaper, the Syrian President Bashar Assad said something that should really become a bumpter sticker in the US:

The Bush administration does not have the vision or will for the peace process. It does not have anything.

In the same interview, Assad confirmed that both Syria and Israel are ready to relaunch their peace talks on the basis of Israel ceding the Golan Heights, something to whcih Israel has agreed in principle, but they are waiting for the next American administration to mediate the talks, because, well, Bush is an asshole.

The Bush administration, never one to shrink back from a challenge to demonstrate their incompetence, responded by sending CIA Director Michael Hayden, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to breif Congress about just how evil Syria is.

More after the fold.

This may not be a popular topic, but I think it is pertinent this election season, as Obama has taken a leading role in sex offender registration legislation, and now that it has been aplled all over the country, a lot of problems have emerged. It is difficult to discuss this issue, because the crimes involved are so neinous that the perpetrators receive very little sympathy from the public. However, it is precisely in such situation, with a nearly unanimous majority on one side and a despised minority on the other, when democracy can become very oppressive and extreme solutions can take hold.

Sex offender laws exist in nearly every state at this point, and there is also federal legislation. Most felony level offenses having sex as an element, from lewd behavior to child molestation to rape, now carry mandatory lifetime registration, with permanent stigmatization and restrictiosn on where people can live. Many states are also regularly employing civil commitment for offenders whose incarceration term has expired, keeping them in state mental hospitals indefinitely without the need for a sentence from the court. The result is the creation of a permanent institutionally persecuted pariah class.  

More after the flip, with Obama's position on the subject.  

I have been following the Jeremiah Wright story since it was first publicized many months ago.  At the time, Obama decided not to address the beliefs of his pastor and to pretend that the entire history of black nationalism and black liberation theology is a relic of the past, which Obama ignored on a weekly basis.  Now the story is back, and what will Obama do this time?  More of the same slience, of course.  If there is any vestigial racism in this country, then surely the election of Obama will officially end it, thereby eliminating any need to discuss it further or make any additional reforms.  

This is not surprising, Obama is a Democrat and wants to be President of a deeply racist country which does not tolerate talk of its atrocities.  But a historic opportunity is missed, as a black man clearly versed in the philosophy of black liberation, could explain to white America that the African American community still has grievances, that it still feels like the stepchild, that it is hard to be proud of America when you are black.  He can revisit the history of Malcolm X, of Muhammad Ali, and show the general public that there is an ongoing tragedy in our society that has been hushed up, forgotten, and unaddressed.

I am not a supporter of either candidate. Their general militaristic stance and their refusal to offer us even the promises of genuine reform of the education and health care systems (promising instead an increase in subsidies to the health care, health insurance and university industries) make them non-starters for me.

However, I am willing to make a deal with Obama supporters - they would get my support during this election, and the support of all those who I can influence, in return for a promise of future performance.  The terms: if Obama is elected President, and in two years: (i) we still have over 100,000 troops in Iraq; (ii) the current number of troops in Afghanistan; (iii) the US has invaded another country; (iv) no immigration law reform; and (v) no government run alternative health insurance provider is pending for passage in Congress, then each and every Obama supporter here shall renounce their membership in the Democratic Party and work to create a genuine progressive party in opposition to both major parties.  I will be back in February of 2011 to collect your souls.  If even one of the above has been delivered by Obama, then I will become a Democrat for life.  

Follow me after the flip for details of this fantastic offer.

I found yesterday's results frustrating on the Democratic side because the close voting totals resulted in a tie for delegates. What's the point of Super Tuesday if it gives no edge to either side? Obama can claim that this tie is a win, Clinton can claim something else, but the fact is, it's as if the whole Super Tuesday never happened, the net result will be a swing of 10 delegates or soemthing like, which is what we could have gotten from one winner take all primary in a small state. Follow me after the fold for a few more paragraphs about the same thing.

Bush has now departed Jerusalem, where he promised peace and was treated like Caesar.  All nighttime illumination, which frames the ancient white walls in a ghostly glow through the dark hours, was turned off to allow the City to emerge from darkness with the first rays of the sun under the watchful eye of the Emperor.  I am reminded of a line in Bulgakov’s "Master and Margarita": "The darkness finally hid the hateful city of Jerusalem from the procurator’s weary eyes."  

What we need in Israel are new solutions, a clean break with the past, not repetitions of tired rhetoric from all sides.  The 1967 borders, the 1970s U.N. resolutions, the right of self determination for ethnic groups, the inviolability of sovereign states – these rigid twentieth century concepts, which were responsible for so much bloodshed in the last century, must be abandoned or modified if we hope to achieve a meaningful and viable long term solution in Palestine, rather than an ephemeral showpiece, like the Oslo Accords, to mount on the mantle of an outgoing U.S. President that will have no tangible positive results other than another reshuffling of the cauldron that is the occupied territories.

Follow me after the flip for some alternative ideas on the question of Palestine.

Finally, we have a candidate that I am excited about, but as I see no mention of his entry into the race on the DailyKos, I feel obliged to take the lead and open the eyes of those who are ready to see, and fill the ears of those ready to listen. I have previously written on my relectuant to vote on general principle so as not to take part in this corrupt charade we call the two party electoral system.  However, now the playing field has been transformed and expanded by the appearance of a magnetic independent write in candidate, and I say that I will use my vote and my voice, I will finally vote, I will embrace this sweet bitch called Democracy, by voting for Ralph Wiggum as a write in candidate.  

Follow me after the flip for a detailed analysis of the exciting political positions of the new frontrunner of the united Republican Democratic Party.  Not since the Jefferson junta wiped out the Federalists, killed Alexander Hamilton, and set up a one party state has there been a more promising unifying party in America, and not since Mr. Jefferson himself has there been a more promising idiot savant candidate.  With the Fox juggernaut behind him, we, his supporters, can be sure that this will not be another wasted vote or "a Dean" as they are now called by the politologians.

I saw the movie "Juno" yesterday and felt that a diary was necessary to discuss the ever-growing number of films such as "Knocked Up" that are masquerading as feel good indie comedies but are really clichéd attempts to indoctrinate a whole new generation of little girls with the familiar American dogma of "Though abortion is legal, it’s not an option you should ever consider, because pregnancy is fun and all will turn out well in the end."  

It used to be just television shows that treated abortion as an inconceivable option not even meriting discussion.  Now we have a new generation of films aimed at young people that try to make the choice not a choice at all.  This is not a movie review, but a discussion of the portrayal of abortion in the media.  Follow me after the flip and I will rant some more.

I realize that this website is devoted to helping Democrats win, and right now we are all in the midst of the pre-primary frenzy, but I thought a different perspective (no, not Republican, silly, those guys eat babies) would be in order.  It has often been said, and I believe, that, by developed world standards,  America has two right wing parties (three if you count Libertarians) and no left wing parties save the comically inept Socialists.  

Given this situation, what does a progressive thinker do when election time comes?  Does one continue to vote with the less extreme right wingers (Democrats) in the hope that one day they will get lost in the dark hallways of the Capitol and veer left, or more realistically, that at least the Democrats can moderate the more extreme Republican positions while meekly trotting behind the elephant’s rump, like an apologetic and mildly retarded carnie?