If we were having this conversation in 1985, and I had said to you, “Four years from now the Soviet Union will collapse and in six years it will disappear,” you would have thought, “This is not a reliable observer.” But the U.S.S.R. is gone -- disappeared -- and we didn’t predict it. Russia today is a much smaller country than the former Soviet Union. The CIA had all the wrong data. We also made a mistake when we concluded that we had won the Cold War. We had almost nothing to do with what happened in the Soviet Union: there were internal issues and it certainly wasn’t Star Wars. We now know in detail how Gorbachev brought Sakharov out of exile in Gorky to address the Politburo on, “What would you do about a ballistic missile defense?” Sakharov said, “It’s easy to overwhelm it with missiles. I wouldn’t spend a ruble on it.” And they didn’t. But in mistakenly thinking that we won the Cold War, we strongly imply that we did something to cause that. Instead, the Soviet Union collapsed because of overstretch, a case of imperial overstretch. An Empire of More Than 725 Military Bases An interview with Chalmers Johnson, author of
Blowback and
The Sorrows Of Empire (More Inside)
posted by y2karl
on Dec 1, 2004 -
33 comments
What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.via
Three Toed Sloth..
posted by y2karl
on Oct 29, 2004 -
29 comments
Harvard's Institute of Politics has created a short
test to measure where your political beliefs fit with college students across the country. You better sit down for this one:
I am a Traditonal Liberal ! From Secular Centrist
Matthew Yglesias. Take the test and see where you fall on the brightly colored chart.
posted by y2karl
on Apr 16, 2004 -
66 comments
Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon's heartthrob and the State Department's and CIA's heartbreak, has taken the lead in a yearlong political marathon. Temporary constitutional arrangements are structured to give the future prime minister more power than the president... Chalabi holds the ultimate weapons -- several dozen tons of documents and individual files seized by his Iraqi National Congress from Saddam Hussein's secret security apparatus. Coupled with his position as head of the de-Baathification commission, Chalabi, barely a year since he returned to his homeland after 45 years of exile, has emerged as the power behind a vacant throne... All the bases are loaded for a home run by MVP Chalabi. If successful, it will be an additional campaign issue president Bush could have done without. Saddam was good riddance. But was Chalabi a worthy democratic trade?
posted by y2karl
on Mar 29, 2004 -
18 comments
America has had periods of single-party dominance before. It happened under FDR's New Deal, in the Republican 1920s and in the early 19th-century "Era of Good Feeling." But if President Bush is re-elected, we will be close to a tipping point of fundamental change in the political system itself. The United States could become a nation in which the dominant party rules for a prolonged period, marginalizes a token opposition and is extremely difficult to dislodge because democracy itself is rigged. This would be unprecedented in U.S. history.
In past single-party eras, the majority party earned its preeminence with broad popular support. Today the electorate remains closely divided, and actually prefers more Democratic policy positions than Republican ones. Yet the drift toward an engineered one-party Republican state has aroused little press scrutiny or widespread popular protest. America as a One-Party State
posted by y2karl
on Jan 19, 2004 -
45 comments
Bounding the Global War on TerrorismOf particular concern, has been the conflation of al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a single, undifferentiated threat. This was a strategic error of the first order because it ignored critical differences between the two in character, threat level and susceptibility to U.S. deterrence and military action. The result has been an unnecessary preventive war a against a deterred Iraq that has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault from an undeterrable al-Qaeda. The war against Iraq was not integral to the Global War On Terrorism but rather a detour from it. Full text:
HTML or
PDF See also
War College Study Calls Iraq a 'Detour'
posted by y2karl
on Jan 12, 2004 -
74 comments
Army Stops Many Soldiers From Quitting According to their contracts, expectations and desires, all three soldiers should have been civilians by now. But Fontaine and Costas are currently serving in Iraq, and Eagle has just been deployed. On their Army paychecks, the expiration date of their military service is now listed sometime after 2030 -- the payroll computer's way of saying, "Who knows?"
The three are among thousands of soldiers forbidden to leave military service under the Army's "stop-loss" orders, intended to stanch the seepage of troops, through retirement and discharge, from a military stretched thin by its burgeoning overseas missions.
As Helena Cobham
notes,
They don't want to call it a draft but it sure ain't your father's "all-volunteer military" any more... Marine's Girl, Cobham's
cause celebre of some time ago, writes about stop-loss
here and
here. See also
Army reservists choosing to be citizens, not soldiers.
posted by y2karl
on Dec 30, 2003 -
37 comments
It seems slightly scandalous that Krugman has persisted in noting that the present administration has been moving the lion's share of the money to an array of corporate interests distinguished by the greed of their CEOs, an indifference toward their workers, and boardroom conviction that it is the welfare state that is ruining the country. Krugman has been strident. He has been shrill. He has lowered the dignity of the commentariat. How refreshing. Russell Baker reviews Paul Krugman's
The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century.
We have now reached a point when even the White House may be forced to sort out how a president who got elected to execute a straightforward business agenda managed to sandbag himself with the coinciding fantasies of the ideologues in the Christian fundamentalist ministries and those in his own administration.... Joan Didion reviews
Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle of the Ages
by Tim F. LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.
The New York Review of Books 40th anniversary edition is an especially good read..
posted by y2karl
on Oct 28, 2003 -
10 comments
The Gropenator will have to spin his wheels for awhile:
California's Vote Delayed by Court Over Punch Cards. And here's the kicker--it's deja vu all over again, Bizarro stylee:
Bush v. Gore Outlives Its Limited Warranty for Use in CaliforniaThe Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore was meant to be a ticket good for one ride.
"Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances," the justices said in their unsigned opinion in 2000, "for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities."
Three judges on the federal appeals court in San Francisco, all appointed by Democratic presidents, decided yesterday to use it for another ride anyway.
posted by y2karl
on Sep 15, 2003 -
8 comments
