Private Boots on the Ground

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been a pot of gold for private contractors.  Gives them a lot of motivation to end the war, doesn’t it?

A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.”

More from Jeremy Scahill

Uh Huh

 … health insurance stocks are soaring today in response to the industry-serving “health care reform” bill backed by the Democratic Senate and White House — the same people who began advocating for “health care reform” based on the need to restrain on an out-of-control and profit-inflated health insurance industry (h/t Markos).

More at Greenwald

Tortuous Debates

This op-ed by Frank Rich at NYT should put an end to them.  But won’t:

Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.

Read the whole thing here

Greenwald on the Torture Memos

The most criticism-worthy act that Obama engaged in yesterday was to affirm and perpetuate what is the single most-destructive premise in our political culture:  namely, that when high government officials get caught committing serious crimes, the responsible and constructive thing to do is demand immunity for them, while only those who are vindictive and divisive want political leaders to be held accountable for their crimes.  This is what Obama said in affirming that rotted premise:

This is a time for reflection, not retribution. . . . But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America’s ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.

That passage, more than anything else, is the mindset that has destroyed the rule of law in the U.S. and spawned massive criminality in our elite class.  Accountability for crimes committed by political leaders (as opposed to ordinary Americans) is scorned as “retribution” and ”laying blame for the past.”  Those who believe that the rule of law should be applied to the powerful as well as to ordinary citizens are demonized as the “forces that divide us.”  The bottomless corruption of immunizing political elites for serious crimes is glorified in the most Orwellian terms as “a time for reflection,” “moving forward,” and ”coming together on behalf of our common future.”

Regardless of the reasons, it is clear that Obama will not single-handedly eliminate the immunity from the rule of law which the political class and other elites have arrogated unto themselves.  If anything, as his comments yesterday reflect, he is likely to affirm and defend that immunity (and, obviously, he personally benefits from its ongoing vitality).  Demanding that political leaders be subjected to the rule of law — and finding ways to force the appointment of a Special Prosecutor — is what citizens ought to be doing.  Either we care about the rule of law or we don’t — and if we do, we’ll find the ways to demand its application to the politically powerful criminals who broke multiple laws over the last eight years.  Obama’s release of those torture memos yesterday makes that choice unambiguously clear and enables the right to choice to be made.

The whole thing is here

Time & Elections

From the article US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites by Mark Danner at NYRB on the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay [pdf]:

We think time and elections will cleanse our fallen world but they will not. Since November, George W. Bush and his administration have seemed to be rushing away from us at accelerating speed, a dark comet hurtling toward the ends of the universe. The phrase “War on Terror”—the signal slogan of that administration, so cherished by the man who took pride in proclaiming that he was “a wartime president”—has acquired in its pronouncement a permanent pair of quotation marks, suggesting something questionable, something mildly embarrassing: something past. And yet the decisions that that president made, especially the monumental decisions taken after the attacks of September 11, 2001—decisions about rendition, surveillance, interrogation—lie strewn about us still, unclaimed and unburied, like corpses freshly dead.

How should we begin to talk about this? Perhaps with a story. Stories come to us newborn, announcing their intent: Once upon a time… In the beginning… From such signs we learn how to listen to what will come. Consider:

I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room. The room measured approximately 4m x 4m [13 feet by 13 feet]. The room had three solid walls, with the fourth wall consisting of metal bars separating it from a larger room. I am not sure how long I remained in the bed….

A man, unnamed, naked, strapped to a bed, and for the rest, the elemental facts of space and of time, nothing but whiteness.

Chomsky on Geithner

QotD

… our political class cheers on treasury-draining wars, allows financial elites to rob and pillage, witnesses huge transfers of wealth to the richest, and then when the whole thing explodes, the “real fiscal answer” is for ordinary Americans to have their Medicare benefits “slashed” and Social Security benefits reduced.

Glenn Greenwald

Chaos in Afghanistan

From Afghanistan on the Brink by Ullrich Fichtner at Speigel:

… in the eighth year of the Afghanistan mission, at the beginning of an Afghan election year that could spell the end of President Hamid Karzai’s government this summer, there are still many difficult questions to be asked: What exactly are the 60,000 international troops stationed there fighting for, if Afghanistan, despite their presence, actually dropped by 59 positions on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, to 176th out of 180 countries, in only three years? How is it possible that Afghanistan’s opium production did not shrink during the years that NATO has been present in the country, but in fact grew larger, so that 92 percent of worldwide opium production today comes from Afghanistan?

[...]

Day after day, foreign soldiers are killed and Afghan policemen are murdered, and the life of President Karzai is constantly in danger. Nowadays, his convoy only ventures into the streets outside the presidential palace walls in Kabul with an escort of two Apache attack helicopters. Is Afghanistan lost? Is it a failed state? A failed experiment by one of the biggest coalition of nations ever formed? Is this the end of the world order dominated by powers like the United States, the UN and NATO? And exactly how strong is the Taliban?

[...]

To gain a realistic picture of the current situation in Afghanistan, one should consult the grand old men of Afghan politics, representatives of the Aga Khan, provincial mayors, members of parliament and Turkish reconstruction workers, bankers involved in micro lending and telecommunications entrepreneurs, election monitors, bodyguards, school principals and even the owner of the “Humaira Aria” beauty salon, where wealthy Kabul girls come to prepare for their weddings. Their comments merge into a single conclusion, namely that their country is on the brink, that the global public is being strung along with empty promises that perseverance will lead to success, and that 2009 will be the decisive year for Afghanistan.

Read the whole thing here

Kings of America

From a review of NBC’s Kings by Heather Havrilesky at Salon:

During hard times, we hunger for the reassurances of fate. We long for some divine force to guide us through a cruel, unpredictable world, to indicate, through some glorious and elegant spectacle, that we’ll make it through the storm.

Here in America, for all of our democratic ideals, we’re more than happy to treat our leader like royalty, so long as he has the stature and dignity to deserve our adoration. Because, just as a bumbling frat boy who stumbles on his words and blithely drops bombs on nonbelievers can make the entire world look like a hardened, messy, incomprehensible hell, a graceful, eloquent man seems to magically transform our planet into a shiny, hopeful place populated by humble, pure-hearted people who have the courage to believe that they’ll make it through the darkness. Even the atheists among us relish the sense that some eternal, celestial force has finally descended, to cure our blindness and set us free.

We’re fragile children, after all, and we’d prefer to believe that there’s a benevolent and wise parent somewhere who loves us unconditionally. Even if our actual parents sipped gin and tonics and mumbled halfheartedly in our direction as Walter Cronkite confirmed their worst suspicions about the world, we still can’t quite let go of our deep desire to be soothed and led, like docile lambs. Grown up and burdened by a million and one responsibilities, we still yearn to be told stories and fed and tucked into bed, assured that the path ahead is clear and simple, flat and smooth, set forth by a mystical power who reigns over every living thing.

Read the rest here

This Is Great!

I’m over the moon about having something good to say about Barack Obama.  Apparently his administration has decided to climb back into the leadership saddle at the UN:

After nearly a decade of an often tense and estranged relationship with the United Nations, Washington appears to be taking a much more conciliatory and multilateral approach to the world body.

U.S. President Barack Obama formally restored funding for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) Wednesday by signing a major spending bill, prompting U.N. officials to again welcome the policy shift on women’s health-related rights.

In January, Obama issued an executive order lifting an eight-year ban on U.S. funding for overseas family-planning groups and clinics that perform or promote abortion or lobby for its legalisation.

“We are delighted that the United States will, once again, take a leading role in championing women’s reproductive health, and rights,” said UNFPA’s executive director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. “This is a great day for women and girls.”

During the administration of George W. Bush, the UNFPA lost its U.S. funding on charges that it was trying to promote abortion, an allegation that Obaid and other officials strongly denied.

In a recent statement, Obama said the resumption of U.S. funding would help not only to reduce poverty, but also improve the health of women and children and prevent HIV/AIDS.

UNFPA says due to the U.S. restrictions on funding its programmes, millions of women in poor countries were unable to access health care during pregnancy and that many of them died as a result.

Earlier this week, Obama signed the legislative omnibus funding bill containing a 50-million-dollar contribution to UNFPA. The funding had been in limbo since 2002 when Bush began to implement his ideologically-driven policies towards women’s rights.  [more]

The UNFPA has been almost hopelessly underfunded.  Among other things, it’s the UN agency responsible for the health of women in the DNC – those who have been raped and maimed by DNC rebels and soldiers.  Much more money is needed than will be provided by this change, but it’s a wonderful new start.  Thanks Barack!