The System

Amen.

And with the “free speech zones” the Secret Service and our local “Protect and Serve” cops always set up several blocks away from wherever Emperor George goes, it is dissent that doesn’t even have to sully his eyes and ears.

Isn’t the “Republican/Democratic duopoly” really a function of electing legislators from single-member districts?

There are plenty of rich democracies that spend lots of money on politics but still manage to have multi-party systems.

In the same op-ed you quote, Bacevic explains whose money is forcing people like Sens. Kennedy and Kerry to ignore the ‘will of the people’ as expressed in the 2006 elections. It’s the money of “wealthy individuals and institutions” and/or “big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies”.

Regardless of whether you think Bacevic has identified the nefarious coalition that got us into the second Iraq war, are you saying these same guys are keeping us in it today, after the election?

Isn’t there a very good case to be made that we are stuck in Iraq today for the same reasons people like you said we shouldn’t get in in the first place–i.e., that once a country occupies a dysfunctional country, it takes on responsibilities that it can never fulfill but that it also can never abandon without leaving chaos behind, and that the process of leaving must be extraordinarily difficult? If people who said ‘quagmire’ in 2002 and 2003 really meant ‘quagmire’, isn’t this part of that?

And, finally, it’s too bad there haven’t been any ‘wealthy individuals or institutions’ or religious groups or Midde-Eastern countries pushing to get us out of Iraq!

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The fuller Bacevic:

“To be fair, responsibility for the war’s continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son’s death, my state’s senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son’s wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don’t blame me.

To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove — namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.

Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.”

sn’t there a very good case to be made that we are stuck in Iraq today for the same reasons people like you said we shouldn’t get in in the first place–i.e., that once a country occupies a dysfunctional country, it takes on responsibilities that it can never fulfill but that it also can never abandon without leaving chaos behind, and that the process of leaving must be extraordinarily difficult?

It is possible, but I have not seen it. In fact I really havn’t seen anyone or import make this argument, valid as it might be, anywhere. Nor I have seen a lot of concern about this from the pro-war folks.

But, if you have links please provide.

Even if true, however, it is hard to argue that it is the “fault” of the people who pointed this originally. If they had not said it would it no longer be true?

I’ve been reading Bacevich’s book on American militarism and his analysis and prescriptions there are far more nuanced than the apparent vulgar Marxism of the snippet. (Not that money doesn’t play a part in politics–a big part).

Not only do electoral political calculations play a part, but also when institutions (”military industrial complex” and associated think tanks, institutes, and schools of thought) arise in response to a real or perceived problem (the Soviet/Communist threat post-WWII), and the problem disappears (e.g. with the Wall and the USSR), the institutions are less likely to vanish than to discern some new problem to justify their survival. I call this the March of Dimes Effect after an anti-polio charity that moved on to other causes rather than claim victory and dissolve itself.

Hence the constant alarums about supposed neo-Hitlerian threats in Russia, China, (absurdly) Iran, and militant Islam generally. The latter is a threat but qualitatively different from that posed by the border-crossing mechanized armies mobilized by various national varieties of socialism. Militant Islam is hardly likely to be effectively fought with cruise missiles and parliamentary rituals.

If we analyzed the need for 10,000 nukes and bases in dozens of Eurasian lands from a “zero-based budgeting” point of view, no doubt many careers and defense contractors would be foundering or at least retooling. Munich analogies would automatically earn a “D” or an “F” in any peer review, Professional problem-solvers will, however, invent problems to sell solutions, if genuine problems can’t be found.

Money does talk, but its jabbering employs received, tried-and-true concepts and slogans.

You’re definitely onto something, Grumpy Old Man.