War Handwavium

Not that I agree with everything Bill Maher says, or even that I agree that the all inclusive “we” is really accurate, I have to say there is some cutting-to-the-truth in this line. We love the troops the way Michael Vick loves dogs.

There is definitely a group of Americans who view war as a form of entertainment, just like there are folks who like to watch dogs kill each other. A certain kind of war, to be honest, but war. During the first Gulf War, the US news loved to show footage from cameras in laser-guided bombs fall on bridges or go through windows in buildings or hit a tank. The things were practically on infinite loops. It’s exactly the kind of war America loves. During the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Pentagon put restrictions on the media showing images of dead american soldiers. That’s the kind of war America wants to pretend doesn’t exist.

We prefer to watch the cartoonish antics of “The A-Team” and avoiding the senseless butchery that is shown in “Apocalypse Now”.

In America, war is sport. Not everyone watches it or enjoys it, just like not everyone watches Nascar, or football, or luge, or whatever. Just like not everyone watches dog fighting. But war in America is a sport.

A little while ago, Obama said that he wasn’t going to do a knee-jerk reaction to Afghanistan and simply send more troops without a good strategy to go with a surge. Within the next day, someone leaked a military report that said America will “fail” in Afghanistan if we don’t add more troops.

The gossip going around is that someone in the Pentagon leaked the report to put pressure on Obama to do the knee-jerk reaction and send more troops.

What has been leaked *since* is that the report says that Afghanistan will need a total of half a million American troops and will take at least 5 years

If true, I’m definitely in the “need a strategy” camp before sending more troops. Half a million troops and five years is just plain crazy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-andrews/classified-mcchrystal-rep_b_298528.html

http://news.aol.com/article/the-point-afghanistan-mcchrystal-report/681449

From the Huffington Post:

The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to “any organization” that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things. In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. whoops.

Whoops indeed.

See, the right wing took ACORN and whipped it into a right wing feeding frenzy about all that is “wrong” about government. What mainly is “wrong” about ACORN is they helped register poor and underrepresented citizens in poor neighborhoods. That usually translates into Democratic voters, which angers the Republicans. So they found ACORN employees doing naughty things, convinced their base that it was systemic to ACORN as an organization, and quickly passed legislation to cut funding to ACORN.

OK. Fine. But you can’t legislate something specifically to cut funding from ACORN. Laws can’t punish specific individuals, they have to punish any individual who behaves in a certain way.

So, what they did was pass a law that defunds any organization who acts fraudulently.

OK. Fine. Except that sort of behaviour has occurred in giant military industrail companies. The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) went through the database and immediately found that Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman both qualify for ACORN-style defunding due to the 20 cases of fraud between them. Blackwater is another group that committed fraud against the government.

Actuallly, I think defunding fraudulent companies is a good idea. As long as it’s implemented in a behavioural way, not specifically calling out ACORN, but calling out and defunding ANYONE who commits fraud. The problem is, this bill was rammed through by the Right, and the Right is probably going to have an issue with the defunding of the military industrial complex that they hold dear to their hearts.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/22/whoops-anti-acorn-bill-ro_n_294949.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/help-him-help-us-by-digby-couple-of.html