Like I said, I want my guys to be filled with spine. I want them to represent their interpretation of what their constituents should have, rather than what’s gonna play best next election cycle. So, yeah, the dems sucked big hog on Iraq and their attempts at explicating their votes then and their opinions now are sad.

From the administration’s point of view, Iraq was gonna happen, any way it could. You don’t distort intel to the public and the UN, market BS stories like welcomed with roses, or any of the other shenanigans that went on in the build up without being HARD committed to the goal, in this case, invade Iraq, and add their oil back to the market.

As for economic solutions: Invest BIG in Iraq. The way we invested in late 40′s and early 50′s Japan and Germany. Invest with the goal of a win-win solution, where you might not get a full Return on Investment. Accept that your solution might be a win-WIN solution, and we get the small win. This is what government does well (aside from health care). Spend the cash that the market isn’t gonna spend.

Ultimately, while the economies of the middle east are as bad as they are, you’re going to have foreign fighters, hired farmers-cum-terrorists, cultish leaders, strong resentment of the US, the West, and royals.

I could suggest that you don’t cut taxes and fight a war at the same time (no one has accused the dems of cutting taxes while rallying for a way, yet any way). It hadn’t ever been done before and based on results, it shouldn’t again.

PS- No-Bid crony contracts are a signal to Iraqis that our government is interested in enriching it’s friends, not improving the quality of life of the average Iraqi. There are a hundred other things like no-bid cost-plus crony contracts that send the same message. Very few things send the right message at present. And that’s the wrong way to go about things.

Hi Max–

Agreed on all fronts.  I think the best thing we can do for the Iraqis is make them prosperous.  Prosperous people don’t go looking for trouble.

And I think the Democrats failed badly on the Iraq issue.  Whenever I say that I have all these people tell me that it was the Republican’s fault in the first place.  I disagree.  In my opinion the members of the party in power – whichever party that may be – always act like idiots.  It’s the responsibility of the out-of-power party to show good sense and rein the idiots in.

Cheers–

MRE 

http://kucinich.us/

Cheers,
Anna

Hi Anna–

I don’t know much about Kucinich, but I wouldn’t vote for him simply because he’s a vegan.  And I’m not being facetious.  I’m a believer in the Socratic school that says you should vote for the smartest candidate with the most character instead of your own party’s choice (assuming your own party doesn’t put up the smartest one) because you can rely on someone who is smart and has good character to do the right thing when the time comes.  I’ve read a number of studies showing that people who don’t eat enough fat (nor the right kinds of fat) have slower response and reaction times.  I’ve taken this to mean that they have slower, less capable all around brain function.  (If you don’t believe this, try driving around in Boulder, Colorado sometime and watch all the indecisive, angry vegetarians try to park and navigate in traffic in general.)  So, I wouldn’t vote for someone who is cognitively impaired even if he were totally politically aligned with me.

It’s a good thing Hitler was a vegetarian or we might all be doing the goose step.  His dithering and bad decisions cost Germany the second world war.

Cheers–

MRE 

I enjoyed your views on the slime that is Washington now, but I couldn’t help but laugh when I read the statement above.

I went with my 78 year old mother to the doctor for her annual physical. He started to harrass her about needing a colonoscopy right now. He insisted she needed one immediately. She said why, hers had worked fine for 78 years and she didn’t want one.

Just to have some fun, I asked the guy if he was really interested in finding if my mom had colon cancer or was this just what he asked everyone as part of his practice. He assured me that he was only looking for cancer. I then suggested that he refer her out for an MRI, which I knew my mother would accept faster than she would a hose up her butt. He thought about it for a minute, then said she could probably wait a year longer………..

Thanks for the blog. I enjoy reading it daily.

Hi Rusty–

Thanks for the story.  Happens all too often.

Cheers–

MRE 

Hi Martha–

Sounds like an interesting book.  Unfortunately, I am woefully underread on the history of Islam.  Maybe I should give the book a whirl.

If the author is correct, it makes our prospects for any kind of long-term peace less and less probable.

Best–

MRE 

So, the original post to me suggests that the incentives are wrong. If $100 can move people to random violent acts that are basically suicide missions, then clearly, the economy is not functioning in a way that is useful.

Neither solution: More Troops or Less Troops really addresses the actual problem. And a political solution doesn’t really work either. You need a real economic solution, where Iraqis have better options than suicide missions and afterlife rewards. And due to no_bid crony contracts, the opportunity for an affordable economic solution is likely gone.

Blame the democrats. They didn’t have the votes to stop anything. Even when it was a 50/50 Senate, the former CEO of Halliburton held the trump vote and the ultimate trump, the veto, was very unlikely to be used (in fact, to this point in time over 6 years, our current president has vetoed only once, and threatened it only 7 times. This is an all time low for any president who has sat for a full term). Yes, they should have cried loud or worked a solution, but negotiation only works when both sides have leverage and an interest in negotiating. I wish they were more spinefull and more idealistic. But to not blame the folks who were in power is an interesting bit of spin.

Last thought: If you install a democracy and the folks elect radical religious leaders, is that a failure? Only if the radicals suspend further elections and repress the opposing party. The point of democracy is a government that represents the people, and if they elect radicals, that ought to tell you something.

Hi Max–

I agree with you that if economic conditions were better for the average Iraqi many of these problems would go away.  The question is, how do we bring that about?  I don’t have the answer.

I can just about guarantee you that if the Democrats had risen up in full force and voted against the war, it wouldn’t have happened despite Cheney’s potential tie-breaking vote and despite Bush’s ability to veto.  Nope, in this case, the Democrats were enablers, and, in my view, are just as culpable as the Republicans.  The party in power are the venal idiots–the party out of power need to be the venal anti-idiots, not the venal-idiot enablers.

Cheers–

MRE 

Despite what good we think we can do, I think we’ve overstayed our welcome (if we were really welcomed in the first place). Recent polls show that a majority of Iraqis think they are worse off now and approve of killing Americans. The notion of forcing democracy on the Middle East has proven to be a failure. Just look at Lebanon, Palestine, & Egypt. Islamic radicals were voted in. Even the Iraq constitution says that Islam is the basis for law. That is just one step closer to Sharia law in Iraq. Iraqi Christians are being persecuted like never before and are leaving Iraq in droves. Our troops are being sucked into a civil war.

The thought of pulling up stakes and leaving is distasteful and we are all concerned for all the decent Iraqi people. Yet, I think leaving would be the least worst option. We are just making things worse. True, it’s our mess, but our attempts to clean it up aren’t helping.

Hi Dan–

It’s a tough, tough problem.  I’ll admit that I don’t have a clue as to the optimal solution.  If we leave, there will be a bloodbath.  If we stay there will continue to be a bloodbath, but on a smaller scale.  I spend a lot of psychic energy worrying about the decent, hardworking people there who are caught up in this struggle and who will come to a bad end should we pull out.

I wish that we had never gone there in the first place.

Best–

MRE 

Indeed! 

The US attorneys swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. The constitution calls for equal justice to all. If there was a quota thing going on, that is definitely not equal justice for all. This is a big time Constitutional issue, much different than a little lie about a blow-job.

I agree, Dr Eades, about the democrats. The gutless wonders didn’t even squeak about the Patriot Act, let alone a “preventative war”.
They didn’t protest torture, abandonment of habeaus corpus. What a bunch of whimps! The New York Times trumpeted war mongering directly from Cheney & Rumsfield. Such a mess. Things I never thought would happen have happened. And the democrats didn’t do their job of preventing the republicans from doing evil.

But, you voted for Bush twice. Those who voted for him have to bear a large share of the blame. I am not saying the greater, but a large share.

Cheers

Reread PPLP this week, and donated blood yesterday. I figure it will take 10 quarts to get down to target. Thanks for writing PPLP.

Hi David–

I voted for Bush only once.  And that was the second time when most of the damage was already done.  Call me whatever, but I’m still glad I did.  I would have been suicidal by now if I had to live with that blowhard Kerry and the obnoxious Edwards preening around.  I figured we were better off with a lame duck president in there and a more powerful congress, but the congress didn’t come through.  And I figured that if Kerry and Edwards were the best the Democrats could offer out of the whole field of people available, they deserved to lose, just as the Republicans deserved it in 1996.  Clinton, thanks in great part to Hillary’s antics, was severely wounded in 1996, and the Republicans put on a search throughout the country for the only candidate who couldn’t beat Clinton – Bob Dole – and ran him.   They deserved to lose.   That whole fiasco is one of the reasons I despise John McCain.  He was going around the country telling Republicans that it was Bob Dole’s turn.  Bob Dole, according to McCain, had served his party well for many years, and therefore he deserved his party’s support.  What BS.  Dole wasn’t running for president of the party–he was running for president of the country.  I despise the party way of thinking, which is: party first, country second.

Cheers–

MRE 

I agree about the Democrats even while coming broadly from that side of the political fence (although the differences between the ‘sides’ is so small these days just about anywhere you look).

Here we have had the worst government in living memory for 11 years, and yes I am as mad as hell at the rabble the Labor Party have become, who through general incompetence and apparent lack of alternative vision have allowed this to occur.

Now the government is finally on the nose with voters and we now have an alternative leader .. who may be exactly that, there is a real possibility of change … what what sort?

What we suffer from (and I’m sure you do) is the politics of small targets. Policy options are not just examined by a multitude of focus groups and spin doctors for their potential appeal (as if that weren’t bad enough), but these options are also analyzed on the basis of proposing only what is necessary to the only goal that matters to politicians – getting elected (or reelected). Gone are the days of sweeping visions for long term betterment of society, because it is seen as risky (or in “Yes Minister” parlance “brave”) as anything ‘big’ represents a huge target for the opposing forces to white ant and belittle in a sea of analysis of the detail – and of course this is another reason policy of any kind is not announced until the last minute before an election.

As I say, we have a real opportunity for change on basic issues like rolling back the serious attacks on democratic rights and freedoms this government has imposed, depoliticizing the role of the public service and the armed forces, selection of the judiciary … as well as the big issues such as addressing global warming and getting the hell out of the Iraq. But sadly it is nigh on impossible to see anything ‘brave’ being canvassed as ‘winning’ is considered more important … and once you ‘win’, you have to devote 90% of you time devoted to not losing’ on the next occasion.

Hi Malcolm–

If they devoted only 90% of their time to get re-elected, they might actually be able to get something done with the other 10%.  I suspect they spend 98% of their time ensuring their re-election and 100% of their brain power thinking about it.

Cheers–

MRE 

BTW were you serious about eating the Lays chips as part of detoxification or was that the leg Eades flippancy ?

Thanks as always

Hi Simon–

I was indeed serious about the Lay’s.  Since olestra isn’t sold as an oil, but only comes as part of a processed food, to get it you’ve got to eat the processed food.  And you’ve got to eat enough of it to get 15-20 grams of olestra.

Cheers–

MRE