Arresting protesters. Infiltration of dissident groups. Surveillance. A new report details the pervasive abuses. Large scale social opposition is largely absent. An apparent inchoate cultural reverence for authority suggests a healthy civil society necessary to sustain democratic institutions remains problematic.
Archives for June 2010
Shine On You Crazy Couch Potato – Now Open Thread
Quite a respectable showing for provincials – overtime.
Our conversations with Movement types are what you’ve read elsewhere already. No need to regurgitate except to note this week’s Scalia mocking of soccer did bolster flagging morale. There was a little more energy after that in waving off evident World Cup popularity as just typical transitory American infatuation with winning. This, too, shall pass. Plus, Scalia’s ‘Eyetalian’.
Kids and young adults are voting otherwise. Don’t tell anyone.
Landon Donovan’s miracle goal on Wednesday did far more than propel the United States to the World Cup’s knockout stage. It’s made America the No. 1 soccer video game market on the planet.
So says Electronic Arts, whose FIFA series of console games is both the biggest-selling and highest-rated sports video game in the world. Already expecting a surge of newcomer interest thanks to the World Cup Finals, the American success has Matt Bilbey, EA Sports’ vice president of football, predicting North America will overtake the United Kingdom for sales this year.
“The U.S. market was our No. 4, in the world, four years ago,” Bilbey said. “This year it will be our No. 1 market.”
“Would You Like To Know More?” (Updated)
Thank goodness for the Columbia Journalism Review. They’ve looked into claims that Politico redacted material from a McChrystal story because it was unflattering to the profession avocation. They pronounce all clear. There’s nothing to see.
As you likely know, Politico after-the-fact redacted their reporters’ statements that Michael Hastings, author of the Rolling Stone McChrystal piece, was so effectively candid because he didn’t worry about access and burning bridges. In Jon Stewart’s non-redacted words, Hastings piece revealed the rest of American media as the mediocre, self-editing access sycophants we all know them to be.
But hold on. The august CJR arbiters received an email from a Politico editor. Therein Politico proclaims the deletions occurred solely ‘to tighten up the piece.’ To CJR the issue is settled. (Although carefully crafted language allows CJR to cover itself for the future). Politico doesn’t escape unscathed. CJR wraps Politico’s knuckles for bad form. How thoughtless to withhold such an explanatory email for a day. Many were left in anguish needlessly.
There’s An App For That (Corrected)*
Good old Dave. Always the overachiever is he. Completely dependable, too. In the slick, Washingtonian-instrumental-let’s-use-each-other sort of way. A shame he’s no strategic genius.
When political science attempted to mean something other than a plug on Morning Joe, a number of scholars (notice how we don’t use that word anymore? Instead, we get Michael Beschloss) tried to unravel the linkage – if any – between going ashore in Da Nang 1965 and the progressive Johnson domestic agenda. This was before Reagan made the bear step back on American-made color TVs (yes, preposterous we know, but true, we did make them). Academics like Joanne Gowa delved into presidential records and interviews to ask “Do progressive American presidents have to wage war abroad (Cold or Hot) to appease opponents of their domestic agenda.” In structural terms, is there a terrible quid pro quo for the Voting Rights Act, the Warren Court, the Civil Rights Act, etc., etc.
We know now that Johnson, the Ur political president, certainly took the thought seriously. Democrats and Republicans alike embraced general containment. We fought a hot war in Korea. Ike threatened nukes. The Soviets were a real global threat. After the 1962 Cuban humiliation they embarked upon the largest military escalation in human history.
What’s Obama’s excuse? He’s doubled down on COIN with Petraeus’ appointment (oblique elevation) today. We dump $100 billion $16 billion a month into Afghanistan. With no credible scenario for success (however defined) by July 2011. By the way, that’s another $1.1 trillion almost $200 billion more from the date of this writing alone. Who thinks Obama politically survives a pullout right before the 2012 funny season? Even a wholly cynical ‘decent interval’ deal with the Taliban wouldn’t work in this day and age.
Obama’s smart enough to know his domestic opponents are in the nihilist militant masses. His Afghan policy won’t buy him a single vote on financial reform. Or jobless benefits extensions. He doesn’t face Johnson’s glacial constraints. Nor is he in the same league as the Nixon/Kissinger pairing (for good and ill). Obama chose to make the Afghanistan war his folly. Twice.
One must take him at his word. McChrystal’s faux pas gave him an opportunity to recalibrate. To face unpleasant truths. He chose to download the Petraeus COIN app again. Which makes Obama the biggest American strategic problem of all.
________
* We blew it. The initial numbers are patently absurd. Should have known it without typing. Rudimentary checking would have caught it anyway. We relied on a presentation by a well known foreign affairs/D.C. blogger and simply ran with it. Not a valid excuse. Not just because we didn’t source it. We were caught up making the cute iPetraeus App thing fall into place; we were lazy and regurgitated what we were told. Which is what we ridicule others, especially in the media, for doing. As Les Grossman might say, ‘The Universe is talking’. We’re listening.
Apologies.
Goodbye, Stan
McChrystal’s Rolling Stone star turn ordinarily should bring his career to a close. Many have noted Gates fired former CENTCOM Commander Admiral Fallon for by comparison benign comments in 2007. Still, in this spineless administration?
This tawdry tale of McChrystal’s insular, contemptuous and undisciplined coterie has been in the general air for some time. Some even reported earlier. One has to expect a certain amount. Choosing McChrystal in the first place ensured his command would embody the special operations community’s penchant for exclusionary, tribal combativeness. But it has been a relatively open secret that McChrystal took it all to new heights. Few, however, tried to put all out there. A lot of it is arcane inside baseball stuff, death to big web page counts. And then there’s the risk. For those without convictions and moral compass, the terrifying questioned loomed — what if McChrystal pulled off the blatantly impossible?
Taking on the utter dysfunction of the American war effort offers no percentage in 2010. This is a war Establishment Dems always wanted since 2002 – ask Senator Graham and his tiny notebooks. Didn’t Obama sprinkle hope and change over escalation? And from the Right, aren’t Americans killing dark people and defense contractors happy? 1,000 deaths? 139 Americans die every day on the crumbling interstate system – and they’re not all in Toyotas.
Journalists and pundits hear people talking openly about dysfunction beyond belief over wilting reception celery. So? How does that help them scramble to keep their jobs, columns, grants and access? Bring that morsel to a newroom in free fall or watch a rival write a front page story on the iPhone for huge page count hits? The WaPo did just that, ‘reporting’ on whether senators or congress people prefer Blackberries to iPhones. So imagine starting a story with ‘in embattled Helmand Province’ – boom! There go the surfers to a link about Sandra Bullocks’ divorce. Who the hell really knows or cares where Helmand Province is? Is it in Wisconsin? A few observers did try — to their credit. Dismissed as annoying buzz killers, or defeatist, embittered wonks re-fighting Iraq. The kind of people who still swear it says “I buried Paul.”
So Team McChrystal had to commit seppuku themselves. An appropriately decadent ending for a general out of time and place, contemptuous of the decadent Power he serves. The tableau Rolling Stone presents is about far more than the immediate personalities. We see in microcosm the morphology of fading American Power from the kid on the ground to the Speech-Maker-In-Chief. A lurching, clueless political entity in a terminal spiral. Historical analogies are always suspect. We’ll avoid a direct reference to a particular circumstance and refer in general to the Hapsburgs in decline. It’s hard to see how the current military-contractor-civilian culture can be returned to a healthy and effective vector. Or whether America cares.
What will Barry do (WWBD)? It’s patently obvious he is not in charge of this war any more than say, BP. He may preside. He may exhort. But he is not, contra the tiresome liberal refrain, Roosevelt as Commander in Chief. McChrystal’s dismay encountering this detachment is understandable. But the far more political (and loathed quietly by those with stars on their shoulders) Petreaus knows one rolls with it. Petreaus’ immediate concern is his own brand viability. COIN’s fraudulent intellectual foundations are absurdly clear to those who choose to look. Yet Petreaus just had to ride the Obama slipstream. Didn’t the president after all use the ‘victory’ word? 2011 might as well be tomorrow. What do you think is going to happen?
American retreat is inevitable. One can’t envision this crowd (let alone their predecessors) pulling off a graceful exit. Decadence, besides inertia, often presents its own seductive internally consistent logic. For example, inside McChrystal’s piece are nuggets of truth and stark honesty. In the fun house mirror of high decadence, these are the worst offenses. Obama does not have it in him to commit himself personally and fully to the immersion necessary to fight us clear to a new place. Like he promised he would in the campaign. This is more than about salvaging a failed war or tending to the Gulf. Judging from what we can observe, Obama just doesn’t even see decadence around him. Oh he may say ‘Washington is broken’ to Nancy Pelosi. A petulant child’s complaint.
It ultimately may not matter what he sees. We just don’t think the guy’s got game.
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