Crosby & Nash Play Hardball

“Capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth, communism is the equal distribution of poverty.“

I’m not sure to whom this quotation should be attributed but it came to mind as I watched Chris Matthew’s interview with David Crosy and Graham Nash on Hardball. However, in this case, I would reframe the quotation to be ”Modern American Democracy (MAD) is the unequal distribution of burden....“ At least that’s how I see it.

As Crosby, Nash and Matthews point out, the burden of this war is being born by a minority, a minority that is unlikely to rise up and demand change. We are not all at risk. We are all not suffering the consequences of this war. Only the small percentage of our population who are in the active military are shoulder this burden along with some unnamed future generation of debtor citizens.

It is as if our government has successfully divided and muted its citizens. A majority, when asked, is against the war but they are not acting on their convictions. We are passive because the threat is not knocking on our door, the cost is not in our blood or coming out of our pockets. Why speak out? Why demand action when somebody else is shouldering the burden.

I do not believe in this war. I do not believe in this administration. This is not the country I studied in my high school government class. Slowly, our population is being divided and either pitted against itself or just marginalized until it is just a whisper. The checks and balances that were put in place to ensure the government was ”of the people, by the people and for the people“ are being dismantled. Our judicial system is politically compromised and Congress is AWOL.

Do we not have an obligation as citizens to ensure we maintain the government our Founding Fathers established? I realize that life is busy, our lives are complicated and we have many demands on our time but can we afford to remain safe in our own cocoons while others die, possibly in vain, for us? Do I deserve their sacrifice if I’m unwilling to shoulder my own my own responsibility to this country; my own ”burden“, so to speak?

I apologize for allowing my personal opinions come through so strongly on this blog, it was not my intention but as I watch Hardball this evening, I was struck at how the current situation has been structured (either intentionally or unintentionally) to remove the motivations for galvanizing an anti-war movement. I watched Crosby and Nash speak and wondered how many of our young Americans can even relate to their message.

We have a mess in Iraq and I don’t think it is going to end well, no matter which way we go. I know I can no longer accept the reasons and explanations given by our current administration and I’m not sure I can really expect much different from the next... unless the people speak with a strong and clear voice.

Where is our national voice?

Thomas Friedman on Tim Russert (CNBC)

Thomas Friedman was on CNBC’s “Tim Russert“ this weekend, Sept 22, 2007, and this is one of those shows that I’ll have to watch again, at least the second half. The clarity of what he has to say is very compelling and I think we should be listening. He has taken the gloves off his treatment of our president, he is calling for a revolution in our energy policy and he’s got an intriguing view on climate change and the green ”revolution.“

I don’t know if one can find a copy of this episode online or not, the CNBC site seems pretty sparse; however, I think this show may run on CNBC later this week. It’s worth watching.

The Moral Price of Leaving Iraq

The following was an notable excerpt from Anderson Cooper 360 on Sept 14, 2007. Michael Ware, CNN Correspondent, raised some great questions to consider about our responsibility with regard to Iraq:

GRAPHIC: U.S. opinion of war in Iraq, September 7-9. Favor, 34 percent; oppose, 63 percent.

COOPER: Those were some of poll numbers that greeted General Petraeus as he testified in Washington this week. Support for the war, now in its fifth year, has been declining. And as we learned this week, there are still going to be large numbers of U.S. forces here going into next year's elections.

You're going to hear politicians trying to come up with solutions, though there are no easy solutions at all for what's happening here. The end game, that's what we want to talk about with CNN's Michael Ware, who joins me now here in the Green Zone.

In the United States, some, mostly Democrats, want a date set for withdrawal. They say, those who support that, that it would pressure the al Maliki government, it would pressure the Iraqi military to stand up faster. Would it?

MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's a dream-like state. Anyone who's telling themselves that is absolutely deluding themselves. Maliki's under no pressure from the presence or not of American forces. I mean...

COOPER: Really? He's not under pressure from American forces?

WARE: No. Whilst America, on the one hand, is propping up his regime, on the other hand, they don't answer to the Americans. They don't feel beholden to the Americans. And they have a ready-made sponsor waiting in the wings to step into the American vacuum, as the Iranian president this week himself said.

So the presence of American troops is meant to serve U.S. interests, Western interests. They're not necessarily the interests of the government that America has created.

COOPER: But the U.S. can pressure them to some degree, no?

WARE: It can and it's trying that. It's failed abysmally until this point. Right now the greatest stick that America has, that it's jabbing this government with, the only thing that's forcing them to even pretend to meet any of the benchmarks on de-Ba'athification or reconciliation is that America is now supporting the Ba'ath insurgency. It's supporting the Sunni tribes, and this is terrifying this government.

This government's trying to block it at every turn. Iran has said that you're going to pay a severe price if you keep doing this, but it's the only thing.

COOPER: You know, there are a lot of folks in the United States who say, look, why should the U.S. troops be here? I mean, why should Americans be losing their lives here when Iraqi politicians are going on vacation and are not even passing, you know, reforms that would work towards reconciliation, which would seem -- I mean, everyone seems to admit that's essential for progress here.

WARE: And that's right. And that's not going to happen. You may get it on the surface. You may get some bells and whistles, but you're not going to get true reconciliation, no matter how much people are working to...

COOPER: Still too much hatred and too much desire for retribution?

WARE: And too much vested interest. I mean, it doesn't suit peoples' agendas to come together in the middle. And there's external players all around this country who don't want to see that happen, and they're having much greater affect here than America is.

COOPER: Those who support the U.S. effort here say that American troops should stay because they're a vital national security interest here. If American troops did pull out in great numbers, withdraw totally, even, say in the next year or so, do we know for sure what would happen? Or is it a roll of the dice?

WARE: No one knows for sure. But one thing that we can count on is the blood will flow. And American foreign policy interests will suffer such a withering blow I'm not sure that they would be able to recover from this region.

America can leave tomorrow, as long as it's ready to pay the price. And let's not forget: everyone wants the American sons and daughters to go home. But this is a dilemma facing liberal America. You can do that, but you're going to have such death and misery on your conscience.

There is a moral imperative here. America chose to invade. America created this environment that's not just hurting the Iraqis but it's hurting American interests. It's fuelling al Qaeda and fuelling Iran. You can walk away from that, but it's not without price.

Iraq's crisis comparable to Darfur

This morning, in my World News Briefing from the Financial Times, I found the following summary of a news report:

Four years after a US-led invasion that was sold to the public partly on humanitarian grounds, Iraqis are suffering from a man-made catastrophe comparable in scope to the tragedy in Darfur.

I’m not sure what this says about our future strategy in Iraq but it does not reflect well on our handling of the occupation. Hopefully, I’m not getting too political here but three questions came to my mind when I read this:

1. If the people of Iraq have their basic needs provided won’t that help fulfill our mission?
2. What is in the best interest of the Iraq people?
3. What is our moral obligation?

You can read the full article on the Financial Times website.