Alan Grayson: We've Always Been at War with Eastasia

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/30/871329/-Weve-Always-Been-at-War-with-Eastasia

by Alan Grayson

On May 30, 2010, at 10:06 a.m, the direct cost of occupying Iraq and Afghanistan will hit $1 trillion. And in a few weeks, the House of Representatives will be asked to vote for $33 billion of additional "emergency" supplemental spending to continue the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. There will be the pretense of debate - speeches on the floor of both chambers, stern requests for timetables or metrics or benchmarks - but this war money will get tossed in the wood chipper without difficulty, requested by a President who ran on an anti-war platform. Passing this legislation will mark the breaking of another promise to America, the promise that all war spending would be done through the regular budget process. Not through an off-budget swipe of our Chinese credit card.


The war money could be used for schools, bridges, or paying everyone's mortgage payments for a whole year. It could be used to end federal income taxes on every American's first $35,000 of income, as my bill, the War Is Making You Poor Act, does. It could be used to close the yawning deficit, supply health care to the unemployed, or for any other human and humane purpose.

Instead, it will be used for war. Because, as Orwell predicted in 1984, we've reached the point where everyone thinks that we've always been at war with Eastasia. Why?

Not because Al Qaeda was sheltered in Iraq. It wasn't. And not because Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. It isn't. Bush could never explain why we went to war in Iraq, and Obama can't explain why we are ‘escalating' in Afghanistan.

So, why? Why spend $1 trillion on a long, bloody nine-year campaign with no justifiable purpose?

Remember 9/11, the day that changed everything? That was almost a decade ago. Bush's response was to mire us in two bloody wars, wars in which we are still stuck today. Why?

I can't answer that question. But I do have an alternative vision of how the last 10 years could have played out.

Imagine if we had decided after 9/11 to wean ourselves off oil and other carbon-based fuels. We'd be almost ten years into that project by now.

Imagine if George W. Bush had somehow been able to summon the moral strength of Mahatma Gandhi, Helen Keller, or Martin Luther King Jr, and committed the American people to the pursuit of a common goal of a transformed society, a society which meets our own human needs rather than declaring "war" on an emotion, or, as John Quincy Adams put it, going "abroad, in search of monsters to destroy".

Imagine.

Imagine that we chose not to enslave ourselves to a massive military state whose stated goal is "stability" in countries that never have been "stable", and never will be.

Imagine.

"Imagine all the people, living life in peace."

Sign up to end these wars.
http://salsa.mydccc.org/o/30019/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=34

:patriot:

http://yorick.infinitejest.org:81/1/img/card-1984_instruction_manual.jpg

"Puh-lease. This Grayson clown just don't get it. I'm a republicon. I gots republicon Family Pharisee Values brand 'moral strength.' Bwaaa ha ha ha ha. Smirk."

- xCommander AWOL (R)

...as a crime instead of a military attack. We could have used the international good Bush pissed away to marshall the law enforcement resources of the world and Osama bin Laden would now be in jail, we wouldn't be spending a trillion on illegal, immoral wars, our service men and women would not have been killed and maimed and we'd still have some/most of the good will.


Oh, and Haliburton would have lower profits.

he's facing a tough challenge...in Florida.

Yeah, it seems Central Florida has gone loony - at least if reader polls of the Orlando Sentinel are to be believed. Some of the comments on stories and little polls they take - it's almost shocking. Folks see nothing wrong with Arizona's immigration law, think Obama's handling of the BP/Transocean oil disaster is worse than Bush's response to Katrina. Half the people miss Bush. When it comes to Civil Rights (Rand Paul's comments) almost a third think if a business wants to discriminate, it's up to the marketplace to "punish" that business and almost a quarter believe the "controversy" over Paul's comments is a conspiracy by the liberal media to destroy a Republican. I know I shouldn't put too much stock in those polls since they are easy to skew, but it's still shocking to see. The letters to the editor (at least what the so called "Liberal" paper chooses to publish) are loony too.

the stories too - I voted for him the first time and will vote for him again

It always was more conservative, and I imagine quit a few tea-baggers spill over when you're closer to Bithlo.

Amongst Republican voters, he was ahead of all contenders in the REPUBLICAN primary.

http://dcpoliticalreport.com/FL.htm

I hope he wins

are drilling all the way to China to try to find a way to put this man away.

K & R.

Notice he really doesn't mention poverty at all.

Its all about middleclass... the middleclass unemployed is as close as he gets.

Will ANYONE ever actually take notice of us?

at all anymore --

but, he did at least say this . . .

Imagine if George W. Bush had somehow been able to summon the moral strength of Mahatma Gandhi, Helen Keller, or Martin Luther King Jr, and committed the American people to the pursuit of a common goal of a transformed society, a society which meets our own human needs rather than declaring "war" on an emotion, or, as John Quincy Adams put it, going "abroad, in search of monsters to destroy".

Imagine.

Imagine that we chose not to enslave ourselves to a massive military state whose stated goal is "stability" in countries that never have been "stable", and never will be.

Imagine.

"Imagine all the people, living life in peace."



Was wondering and was going to check on the link I had to those who were organizing the

unemployed. Wouldn't it be a good idea to organize the homeless and those on welfare at

the same time?

will not tend to their own best interests much less be concerned with anyone else. The "middle class" rhetorical focus is an attempt to waken those sleepers and advise them that their own houses are now on fire to see if that will stir them.

In some ways it's like expecting someone that won't comb their own hair or bathe themselves to be a reliable caretaker for an invalid or something.

Right now the "middle class" is generally so out of touch they won't put out their own crotches if they were on fire and they had a fire extinguisher in their hands.

namely that the middle class does not give a hell about the homeless; that the best approach to appealing to the middle class is to shun the homeless in favor of initiatives that help the middle class.

Homeless people don't vote, by-and-large they don't pay taxes (meaning they don't pay for Congress's spending lunacy either), they're unappealing to think about; ergo they're invisible. If Jacob Riis staged one of his lightbox shows of "The Other Half" today, the collective response of the "haves" would most likely be a shrug and a 1/2 second thought of "better them than me."

You probably didn't intend it as such, but your wording made me feel less than human.

Oh, and I DID vote, as do many homeless people. It took me a lot more time and effort than it did for you.

But, given the atmosphere, and as you put it, that we are better ignored, I don't see myself voting again. And that will be a first for me. I am 64 and never not voted, but that is where I am now.

Not that it matters.

merely that for people looking for political-expediency and trying to rally the idiot masses to their side you ARE ignored because the very people they're appealing to ignore you too. 100 years ago, one of my idols (Jacob Riis) as an activist and photo-nerd exposed the reality of life in America for the underclass and the "haves" were shocked...today, well...I think I covered that ground already.

For a nation that once believed in the American Dream of prosperity for all, we've largely become a nation of weak self-indulgent apathetic me-first gimme-gimme wankers with great self-esteem that in reality shouldn't have all that much to feel good about ourselves for. What great things do Americans have to be proud of? Our gleaming environmental stewardship? Our commitment to global peace? Our selfless compassion for the less fortunate? Our culture of tolerance and acceptance? Being the fattest nation on Earth, a global hegemony that consumes far more than our share of global resources on production of disposable crap which then pollutes the Earth for eternity and can't be bothered to think of anybody but ourselves? If it's not the last one, we're pretty f*cked as we've pretty much given up the ghost on the rest of it. :flag:

pick your battles....

Truth is, capitalism is such a fraud that taxpayers have to keep it propped up!!

If I still lived there, I'd be working on his behalf.

I think there's a long row to hoe and he's out in front.

the fucking Oil...

He is the only one with the guts to take on the establishment.

I doubt Grayson could come close to Obama's popularity.

i know that i will take some heat but AL QAEDA is BASED IN AFGHANISTAN & PAKISTAN Border. Bush had a chance to eliminate OBL & AQ leadership in tora bora in Dec 2001 but passed on the opportunity.

All other points i agree, but it is important for world peace that AQ is destroyed. US alone should not shoulder the load but AQ & Taliban don't agree to even our common minimum vision of human rights.

Bush had a chance to eliminate OBL & AQ leadership in tora bora in Dec 2001 but passed on the opportunity.

in Langley Virginia. Always have been, always will be. It's time to dispense with all the fiction that says otherwise, because it ain't destroying them. It's destroying US.

WTF? Rahm'll fix his ass. They'll primary that lefty nut, then offer him a job.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. <…> Is there no other way the world may live?

–Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953.

"Imagine that we chose not to enslave ourselves to a massive military state whose stated goal is "stability" in countries that never have been "stable", and never will be."

Suck my ass, Grayson. Go to a fucking library and crack open a fucking book. Look at Iraq from 1932 to 1961. Look at Afghanistan from 1919 until 1980, when CARTER decided to use it as a Cold War battleground in order to look tough to voters.

Never will be? Okay you stupid cock, listen up. We broke these countries. The rest of you "internet liberal" fuckheads, pay good attention. We broke these countries. We supported Saddam from the moment he took power up to 1991. We turned Afghanistan into our private sandbox to fight commies, and propped up authoritarian extremists to do so. THEN WE INVADED BOTH AND SMASHED THEM UP WORSE.

And you're saying basically, fixing our fuckup might cost money, so these two countries can sit and rotate.

That's why they'll "never be stable" you stupid, self-righteous prick. because of racist, ignorant fucks like you, blocking hte funds and manpower needed to PAY OUR FUCKING BILL and get these people out of the gutter we threw them into.

Fuck you, Grayson, you ignorant, racist fuck.

He's pointing out that we broke these countries.

Have a cookie.

When you've calmed down, lets discuss this on the merits, and not attack one of the only congressmen that has a spine, and is on our side, and has, in general, more common sense than the entire senate (franken aside).

He's pointing out that, in his ignorant opinion, these countries have "never been stable, and never will be" and using that as justification for the United States to abandon them and ignore the gigantic debt we owe them.

That's ignorant. And yes, it's racist; When you point to a bunch of people and basically declare them animals and defective and use that justification to fuck them over, that's racist. Sorry if it pops your monocle, but it's true.

Like I said, I usually like Grayson. But this time he's so unbearably wrong that it's frankly unbelievable.

But I think your response was a bit over-the-top.
Grayson goes farther than any other senator in defending progressive values. He made a mistake in that phrasing. But do you think it was the time and place to start a history lesson about how western powers have been responsible for most of the destabilization of a lot of the developing world? I don't. It would only be used to flare up the right wing talking point machine to scream "blame America first", and the whole point of the speech would be lost.

"A mistake in phrasing"
"Not the time or place"
"What would the Republicans think?"

The whole point of the speech is that he wants to save money by leaving the Afghans and Iraqis to fend for themselves, with the justification that they are hopeless and defective people.

This was no mistake in phrasing, LiberaLovinLug. From what I've seen of "progressives" here on DU, this is, in fact, a core piece of "progressive values" - abandoning Afghanistan and Iraq because "those people" are bestial, because it costs money, because our involvement in these countries is politically inconvenient, take your pick. There's never any considerations from "progressives" on DU that we have a long-term debt and responsibility to both countries. It's all completely selfish logic behind the Progressive desire to abandon Afghanistan to a future of tribal strife and clitorodectomies.

And yeah. Grayson is reflecting that perfectly. So I'm going to stand by what I said, and don't much care if you found it "over the top." What he said was stupid, offensive, and ignorant, and it was NOT a "mistake in phrasing" becuase that stupid, ignorant, offensive stuff is exactly what other "progressives" are saying.

they don't fucking want us there. Wow, guess you showed me.

Iraq, yes - but that only got that way after a year and a half of the US fucking up time and again. We actually were welcomed by the people of Iraq, it was just that Rumsfeld and the Bush Cabal refused to confer with reality about what to do next. While that particular war was never oing to be the "three weeks" that they hoped, successful management and planning could have made it as small as three years.

Afghanistan, on the other hand... Well, we're not exactly welcome, but are regarded as a lesser of two evils. Right now the Afghans understand that it's either we stay and pitch in and train and lead Afghan forces, or the Taliban comes back into power and what little has been accomplished gets washed away in a bloodbath. As such the Afghans are, for the most part, working with us.

"They don't want us there" is the same sort of simplistic thinking that leads to "They've been fighting forever" in the israel-Palestine conflict. it's not only untrue, but it serves as a justification for you to defend the problem via apathy.

Congratulations, you've proven my point.

are you lost?

First, yes, internet liberal fuckheads. In the seven years I've been on DU, I've seen it degenerate from a reasonable, if sometimes contentious discussion board covering liberal policies and backing democrats, to a place where a bunch of trendwhores bawl out whatever makes them look hip or "with it." There's no thought, there's no debate; Either you're "hip" and think the president is a sack of shit, or YOU'RE A CORPORATIST MILITARIST WHO THINKS HE'S THE MESSIAH!!! Either you're "with it" and think we should abandon Afghanistan, or "YOU SUPPORT ENDLESS WAR AND THE DEATHS OF COUNTLESS AMERICANS JUST LIKE VIETNAM!!!

There's no thought. Just flashcards with catchphrases.

And yes, fuck Alan Grayson. He's pointing to two countries that we've destroyed over a period of 30 years for Afghanistan, 50 years for Iraq, and declaring that they have never been stable, and they never will be stable, and saying that's why we should abandon them and save a few bucks. The first is a lie, the second is slander, and the third is... Holy shit. They HAVE been stable, and they CAN be stable again, if we - the people who owe the bill - actually pay up. What Grayson is doing is basically dismissing Iraqis and Afghans as defective, as animals, as something below our consideration. Their plight isn't our problem, even though we are the cause of it. Is that racist? Well, maybe he'd say the same if they were white people, I don't know. I kind of doubt it, since there's no cultural meme that white people are brainless fanatical animals below serious consideration, like there is for Arabs and Muslims in general. But even if it's not racist, it is still overwhelmingly stupid and offensive.

Grayson should stick to swinging Republicans around by their tiny testicles. he's good at it. It provides a useful service to the country. Pretending he knows the first thing about anything to the east of Lubic, ME is something he should not do.

It's way past time to end the wars and no one here would have defended our war of choice in Iraq 8 years ago. New spin on it, though, I have to admit.

However, nobody listened to me (hardly surprising) and we invaded both.

Here's what you and the Bush administration have in common; neither they nor you realize that what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan calls for a long-term commitment. You can't roll in, pulverize a country, destroy its government, and then leave the next day. Certainly you can't do this and expect roses to be thrown in your wake. Both you and they think that you can destroy a nation, and then weasel out of the responsibility of rebuilding it.

No, we shouldn't have invaded. But since we did, our nation has been thrust into a long-term involvement that could stretch for a few decades. it's not politics, LaughingLiberal, that's just the fucking fact of how situations like this work. We destroyed two countries. There's no fast way out of that. You can't just go "Oops, there's an election coming up, let's hurry this up!" like the Bush administration was doing in 03-04. Nor can you say "Well, we have a new administration, time to go home" like you're doing right now.

You want to end the wars? Great, so do I. I want our men and women home safe. I also want Afghans and Iraqis to be safe, in their homes. And if it comes down to choosing between the lives of paid volunteer soldiers, and civilians who had war forced upon their homes, my concern is going to go to the civilians every time.

Fix what we broke, then we come home.

Iraq does not seem to. And it looks to me, after the recent video, that we're doing a hell of a lot more than 'fixing' them. I guess that depends on your definition of 'fix,' though.

At this point, yeah, Iraq wants us the hell out, because we've been screwing around with them for the whole time we've been there. We had lots and lots of chances, kept blowing it, and now there we are.

In Afghanistan, as I said, the situation is different. The Afghans don't like us much, but they like the Taliban less, and realize that the Afghan Army isn't going to be able to do the job without Coalition backing. Coalition forces aren't going to be able to do a damned thing without increased American presence, which is why Obama is sending more men. Reconstruction can't get done for free, which is why we're pumping money in there.

I just want to make myself clear - i think we've been screwing up a hell of a lot in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think the way that Bush went about things was absolutely, completely wrong and counter-productive, and I'm getting the same feeling about Obama, of late, more that he just doesn't know what to do with the situation though. It's just that hauling ass isn't going to make anything better for anyone. What we need is better management handling what needs to be done. Thereneed to be more men on the ground in order to capture, secure, and hold positions against the Taliban, and to create a clear zone for actual reconstructive work to get done. it takes men and it takes money, and the American people, nbeing impatient, violent spendthrifts, like the war but aren't willing to commit or spend.

except the pocketbooks of wealthy corporate interests who profit from these conflicts. I agree we need to spend some money rebuilding Afghanistan. We needed to do that after our proxy war with the Soviet Union there. If we had we would likely not be there, now. I believe we have ways of assisting with the rebuilding without leaving our war machine in place.

I've tried to reason with those folks and it's impossible

Main article: Kingdom of Iraq
Britain granted independence to Iraq in 1932, on the urging of King Faisal, though the British retained military bases and transit rights for their forces. King Ghazi ruled as a figurehead after King Faisal's death in 1933, while undermined by attempted military coups, until his death in 1939. Ghazi was followed by his under age son, Faisal II. 'Abd al-Ilah served as Regent during Faisal's minority.

On 1 April 1941, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and members of the Golden Square staged a coup d'état and overthrew the government of 'Abd al-Ilah. During the subsequent Anglo-Iraqi War, the United Kingdom invaded Iraq for fear that the Rashid Ali government might cut oil supplies to Western nations because of his links to the Axis powers. The war started on 2 May and an armistice was signed 31 May.

A military occupation followed the restoration of the pre-coup government of the Hashemite monarchy. The occupation ended on 26 October 1947. The rulers during the occupation and the remainder of the Hashemite monarchy were Nuri al-Said, the autocratic Prime Minister, who also ruled from 1930–1932, and 'Abd al-Ilah, the former Regent who now served as an adviser to King Faisal II.

Republic of Iraq

Further information: Ba'athist Iraq
The reinstated Hashemite monarchy lasted until 1958, when it was overthrown by a coup d'etat of the Iraqi Army, known as the 14 July Revolution. The coup brought Brigadier General Abdul Karim Qassim to power. He withdrew from the Baghdad Pact and established friendly relations with the Soviet Union, but his government lasted only until the February 1963 coup, when it was overthrown by Colonel Abdul Salam Arif. Salam Arif died in 1966 and his brother, Abdul Rahman Arif, assumed the presidency.



Whoa....totally stable!

(I'm scared to look up Afghanistan!)

...if people had listened to Carter.

If we really want to fantasize...

I can answer that question.