Posted inPolitics: National

Obama’s world of troubles

One of the most questionable propositions of our political journalism is that President Obama is to blame for trouble in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine, the rise of Russian aggressiveness and poor relations with Israel.

The trouble is, I have yet to find anyone questioning it.

One can blame Mr. Obama for many missteps and blunders. Chuck Hagel was a poor choice for Secretary of Defense. The inner circle of the White House probably does micromanage too often, and does so from a blinkered perspective.

Blame the ignorance of Americans and the self-interest of defense contractors for the conceit that we have control of a messy world. We do not.

38
Posted inPolitics: National

The debates we’re not having

As masterful as President Obama's health care speech was, he operates in a nation that is increasingly losing the capacity to govern itself. The blurt of the loutish South Carolina Republican congressman, calling the president a liar, something I have never heard in listening to presidential addresses before that body since JFK…well, that's the least of the problem.

Health care reform foundered on the vicious lies of a well-organized minority and, apparently, the simple-mindedness of the American people (all manipulated by the health industries' hundreds of millions of lobbying dollars). The side dish was the ongoing hyperventilation over the president's citizenship or lack thereof. Then came the hysteria over his "indoctrination" of schoolchildren from a harmless speech (two other presidents have done this, with no controversy). All this from a minority of nuts — and their reactionary masters — who nonetheless dominated the television from which most Americans get their "news." This is how we spent our summer. One would never know who won the election last fall.

Think of all we're not discussing. Not even thinking about as a nation.

4
Posted inPolitics: National

Five years that changed America, whether we know it or not

After five years of war in Iraq, we know a few things. None of them gives us much comfort for the future.

We know that, contrary to President Bush after 9/11 (used as a false pretense for waging war in Iraq), that everything did not change. That was certainly true on the home front. For the first time in American history, taxes were cut as the nation went to war. Most Americans were asked to make no sacrifices at all — indeed, we were told to "consume" more (imagine that admonition from FDR). Americans continued the unthinking choices that helped lead to the mess in the Middle East, chiefly driving ever longer distances in automobiles. Televised and electronic distractions continued and even increased. Many Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack. The media unthinkingly report on "al Queda" in Iraq, although it is a separate group of insurgents that emerged as a result of the invasion. Most Americans, it seems, have "moved on."

No Comments