World's sole super power bogged down by enemy without air force, navy, army = NOT VICTORY.

[laststeamtrain]

The Five-Sided House of Usher
Jeff Huber

The tea leaves tell me we’re about to experience a seismic event that will produce the next collapse of our five-sided House of Usher, the Pentagon.

The last time we saw a temblor of that magnitude was in November 2006. Just before the mid-term election, young Mr. Bush assured us that then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would stick around long enough to “get the job done.” The day after the Democrats regained control of Congress, Bush announced that Rummy would receive a Purple Heart for the bruise he got where the door hit him on his way out. Robert Gates got the top Defense slot, the Iraq Study Group got a bruise in the same place Rummy got his, “King David” Petraeus got command of the Iraq surge, and the rest is historical fiction, especially the parts about how the Iraq surge was a success and how Stan the Man McChrystal was going to repeat that success in the Bananastans.*

The Bush administration announced its intention to escalate the Iraq fiasco in January 2007. The surge has been a dismal flop. Iraq’s government and security forces are congenitally corrupt, incompetent, and ineffective, and we will never fix that. Results of the country’s latest purple-finger poll have been rejected by both major candidates for the prime minister slot, violence is on the uptick, and the Obama administration is once again stuttering into the microphone about how American troops may not be able to withdraw from Iraq on schedule. Ray “Desert Ox” Odierno has been making that kind of boo noise since he took command in Iraq in September 2008. In February 2009, Petraeus hagiographerTom Ricks quoted Odie as saying he wanted to see 30,000 U.S. troops in Iraq until 2014 or so.

AfPak is going to Helmand in a handbag. Banana Stan’s Marjah offensive, the “test” of his strategy (Obama’s strategy, according to the Pentagon’s bull-feather merchants), went over like a lead zeppelin. The only thing McChrystal has done well in command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is what he did well for five years as head assassin of the Joint Special Operations Command: kill a lot of civilians in the process of hunting down “suspected” terrorists. Even McChrystal knows he’s knocking up the puppy. On May 13, he told Jeffrey Brown of PBS Newshour, “Well, I think that, in the last year, we have made a lot of progress,” but “I think I would be prepared to say nobody is winning, at this point.” Shades of the Great Decider. Days before the 2006 election, Bush proclaimed, “Absolutely, we’re winning in Iraq.” Shortly after he put Rummy through the uprights, Bush allowed as how “We’re not winning” but “we’re not losing.”

When you’re the world’s sole superpower, and you’ve been bogged down for eight years by pismire adversaries who don’t have an air force or a navy or an army or even a defense budget, you’re not breaking even, you’re getting your heinie handed to you on a plate with a generous helping of grilled crow on the side. What could better symbolize our humiliating defeat than the recent spectacle of Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton kissing up in public to Afghan sleaze peddler Hamid Karzai? (What a revolting development. In February 2008, then-Senator Biden stormed out of a formal dinner Karzai was giving in his honor. President Obama has called Karzai “unreliable” and “ineffective,” and Hillary has said that Karzai presides over a “narco-state.”)

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http://zenhuber.blogspot.com/

[msongs]

1. it's the my dic* is bigger than yours war maker syndrome (george carlin) nt

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. The river of propaganda and the collective denial of Americans is quite stunning

Obama is becoming the next LBJ. He is being held hostage by these wars created by BushCo. He is obviously not courageous or secure enough as President to face the onslaught of the massive GOP slime machine should he decide to end the wars in a year. Add to that the risk of another mass casualty attack in America and he would be finished after the media went into apocalyptic rage for his not keeping each and every 240 million Americans safe from everything.

These wars are the clearest signal of America's decline as an empire. The average American is entering an age where they are no longer wanted or needed as workers by global corporations. While these wars continue to bleed us dry financially, our economic futures are slipping away. We will become a banana republic with an extremely wealthy 1% owning 80% of everything.

[Blue Meany]

3. I think the turning point was the end of the cold war...

Before that, the American elites had an interest in having a large middle class as a bulwark against socialism in this country and to support the argument that capitalism that delivered greater prosperity to the masses than socialism. They were willing to pay higher taxes and higher wages in order to avoid upsetting the system that kept them wealthy. However, from their perspective, the rasion d'etre for the middle class ended during the Reagan Administration, since there was no viable threat to their wealth on the horizon, and they were quite happy to transform the US into a giant third world banana republic. I'm convinced that this will change only if there is a movement to sieze their wealth or hold them accountable under the law; then they may be willing to compromise like they did in the postwar period and allow the economy to flourish.

[Vinnie From Indy]

4. I would agree that St. Ronnie was the opening act

I think the end note of this song is the fact that the American middle class is no longer needed nearly as much as a market to buy products. We certainly are not needed as workers anymore when corporations can easily hop around the globe finding labor pools in despotic countries to exploit. I fear this aspect of our inevitable economic future will not become clear to Americans for many more years. It is one of the best examples of the "how to boil a frog" story I have encountered. We are being cooked slow enough that the deed will be done before anyone realizes it is happening.

[Doctor_J]

5. Yes - Michael Parenti calls it Rollback

Before the USSR collapsed, US capitalism had to be humanized because otherwise people might turn toward socialism. After The Bear went belly-up, there was no longer any alternative system for the people to turn to. Our Disaster Capitalists could unleash every sort of hell on the hoi polloi and there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it. Bring in the Big Media propagandists to convince the bone ignorant that the problem is ferners, blacks, and educated people, and you have a perfect recipe for a fascist state. Simmer for 15 years, and here we are.

[bemildred]

6. This is the problem with getting in wars with parties that are much weaker than you are.

Even if you win, you lose, and if you don't win, you lose a lot.