Section » Nature & Politics
The day after the Florida primary, when all eyes were fixed in astonishment on the victorious Gov. Romney expressing his indifference to the sufferings of the poor, the Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, gave a speech in Brussels. He said that as early as mid-2013 American forces in Afghanistan will step back from a combat role.
This statement of defeat and imminent flight comes in an election year. Panetta’s speech was the first time any senior American official has publicly put the Afghan government and the Taliban, not to mention We the People and Gov. Romney, on notice that Uncle Sam will be packing his bags well ahead of the all-troops-out deadline of the end of 2014.
Big story? Initially, not everyone seemed to think so. The New York Times ran a dispatch on Feb 2 from Elisabeth Bumiller in Brussels, but not in the top headline deck of its electronic edition. A bigger NYT headline the same day went to a story by Rod Nordland and Alissa Rubin, datelined Kabul, reporting that Taliban prisoners were telling their US interrogators that they–the Taliban–were winning the war.
Finally Romney tottered from Donald Trump’s embrace to grasp at the issue of the Obama administration providing further proof that the president is a traitor to the flag. There are now hints from the White House that Panetta spoke out of turn. Before nailing himself to the colors, Romney should remember that his father lost a strong chance of winning the Republican nomination in 1968 after saying that he’d been “brainwashed” by the Pentagon during a visit to Vietnam.
Footnote: “Civilian deaths due to drones are not many, Obama says.” So that’s okay then. This was a headline in the New York Times for January 31, accurately reflecting Obama’s expressed views. It was back in the mid-1920s that my father Claud, then working as a night editor at the London Times, won a prize for writing the dullest headline actually printed in the Times for the following day. Headline: “Small earthquake in Chile. Not many dead.” –Alexander Cockburn
No Comments • Continue»
More Articles
Newt Gingrich is a one-man, made-in-America melting pot. Here’s a committed devotee of tooth-and-claw capitalism, vultures perched on both shoulders, advocate of eight-year-old black children working as janitors–campaigning with a pro-worker film of which John Reed or Ken Loach would be proud, paid for by a rabidly anti-union billionaire who thinks Israel should bomb Iran [...]
No Comments
• Continue»
January 5 Torture is now solidly installed in America’s repressive arsenal, not in the shadows where it has always lurked, but up front and central, vigorously applauded by prominent politicians. Rituals of coercion and humiliation seep through the culture, to the extent that before Christmas American travelers began to rebel at the invasive pat-down searches, [...]
8 Comments
• Continue»
I can’t count the times, down the years, that after some new outrage friends would call me and ask, “What happened to Christopher Hitchens?”–the inquiry premised on some supposed change in Hitchens, often presumed to have started in the period he tried to put his close friend Blumenthal behind bars for imputed perjury. My answer [...]
No Comments
• Continue»
When in doubt, wheel in Teddy Roosevelt. It’s in every Democratic president’s playbook. TR was president from 1901 to 1909. He was manly, ranching in North Dakota, exploring the Amazon, and nearly expiring on the River of Doubt. He was an imperialist con amore, charging up San Juan Hill, sending the Great White Fleet round [...]
No Comments
• Continue»
First, a simple rule: utter absurdity in allegations leveled by the US government is no bar to a deferential hearing in our nation’s major conduits of official opinion. Suppose the CIA leaks a secret national security review concluding that the moon is actually made of cheese, and the Chinese are planning to send up a [...]
No Comments
• Continue»
But first, a simple rule for killers: If you are going to murder someone in the United States, don’t try to get the job done in Texas. Keep your captive alive in the car till New Mexico, which recently banned the death penalty, or press on to California, which retains the death penalty but makes [...]
No Comments
• Continue»
Across two evenings this week, we’ve been offered America’s future in a couple of visions. Neither of them offered the prime vitamin of bearable politics, the promise of good cheer and a better life at the end of a shortish tunnel. Version one came in the Republican presidential candidates’ debate at the Reagan Library in [...]
No Comments
• Continue»
Let’s get one thing straight from the start. Rick Perry is no blow-dry George Bush clone, even though he owes his political career about 50/50 to Bush and Osama bin Laden. So what is the political profile of the Texas Governor, now officially in the race as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination? A [...]
No Comments
• Continue»
Start with Obama. Of course he blew it. Whether by artful design or by sheer timidity is immaterial. He blew it. Two days before the United States was officially set to default on its debts on August 2, Barack Obama had the Republicans where he wanted them: All he had to do was announce that [...]
No Comments
• Continue»
| |
|