The War in Afghanistan as a Placebo for trying to cure terrorism

What is a “placebo”? According to Wikipedia, it is “a sham or simulated medical intervention that can produce a perceived or actual improvement, called a placebo effect.” What is a “sham”? According to Wiktionary, it is “an imitation that purports to be genuine. The time-share deal was a sham.” What is “terrorism”? It is a nightmare inflicted on skittish citizens by politicians seeking to maintain power and money. and see here. In nightmares, the anxiety and heart palpitations are real, and thus the citizens seek a cure. What is the “war” in Afghanistan? It is a placebo. It is a sham or simulated cure for a disease caused by politicians. Why would I make this conclusion? 1. In the case of placebos, patients show an extraordinary lack of curiosity regarding the mechanism by which the cure supposedly works. In the case of homeopathic drugs, there is no mechanism. For true believers, this lack of a causal mechanism is not a problem. In the case of Afghanistan, there is no connection between the bombing and shooting of poor people and any national interest other than supporting the military-industrial complex. It’s a make-work program for people who like to express power in the form of violence. Believers claim that we are there for “freedom” or to “protect our interests,” yet these are meaningless terms that cover up our lack of real concern. Even if we are spending two billion dollars per month to bomb and shoot poor people and even if the military itself estimates that there are only 100 members of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Here's a warning: Don’t even try to find a worthy causal chain in Afghanistan because it would break the spell. Don’t try to tell patients that they are only taking placebos. That would ruin the cure and the nightmare would still be there. "Once the trial was over and the patients who had been given placebos were told as much, they quickly deteriorated." In fact, they will hate you if you try to make them open their eyes.

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It’s not true there is “nothing new” in the Wikileaks Afghanistan records

Writing at The Nation, Jonathan Schell tells us that it is not true that there is "nothing new" in the Wikileaks Afghanistan releases. In fact, we know that it's not true by the behaviour of the U.S. Army; it considers Julian Assange to be a " "threat to the U.S. Army." If the release of information is a big yawn, how can Assange be a "threat"? I agree with Schell that Americans should be applauding Assange for giving us some truth about the big dirty lies we've been hearing from the U.S. government when it comes to our adventures in Afghanistan:

Among the flood of Afghan war documents there happens to be a report on one more instance of a man who, finding himself threatened with participation in the evil-doing of a malignant system, opted to withdraw. In Balkh province, a little more than a year ago, the report disclosed, Afghan police officers were beating and otherwise abusing civilians for their lack of cooperation. The police commander then sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl. When a civilian protested, the report stated, "The district commander ordered his bodyguard to open fire on the AC [Afghan civilian]. The bodyguard refused, at which time the district commander shot [the bodyguard] in front of the AC." At the time these documents came out, the official reaction to them, echoed widely in the media, was that they disclosed "nothing new." But let us pause to absorb this story. A police officer, unwilling, at the risk of his own life, to be a murderer, is himself murdered by his superior. He gives his life to spare the other person, possibly a stranger. It is the highest sacrifice that can be made. The man's identity is unrecorded. His story is met with a yawn. But perhaps one day, when there is peace in Afghanistan, a monument will be erected in his honor there and schoolchildren will be taught his name. Perhaps here in the United States, when the country has found its moral bearings again, there will be recognition of the integrity and bravery of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange. For now, the war- and torture-system rolls on, and it's all found to be "nothing new."

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Putting health care into perspective when discussing the budget

Check out this short comment and the accompanying chart in this Mother Jones article by Kevin Drum. He has some good advice on how to get serious when discussing the budget. If you are not considering spiraling health care costs, you are are not being serious. Connecting the dots, Obama's health care "reform" was not serious. The Republican proposals are even less serious, amounting to government-implemented social darwinism. I would add that our immense military expenditures also deserve scrutiny and the budget axe.

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Time to blame China again

In the months before September 11, 2001, I was startled to hear many politicians and media outlets drumming up potential military conflict between the United States and China. I remember this well, because my wife and I had recently adopted a Chinese baby, and she was our second Chinese daughter.  I feared that this wild lashing out China would make the United States a bad place to raise our babies.  Here's a sample of the kind of things that you would see back then, this excerpt from a report issued by the Rand Corporation:

According to a newly released Rand Corp. report, China's military is narrowing its technology gap with the U.S. armed forces using U.S. commercial technology. Beijing is developing advanced systems and its military capabilities may approach or equal the United States in some areas, the study says. . . According to Jack Spencer, a defense analyst and fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the Chinese military is preparing itself for a future war with America.

Consider also this excerpt
The Bush administration has made hostility to China one of its foreign policy principles. Bush attacked the Clinton-Gore administration during the 2000 elections, declaring that China was a “strategic competitor,” not a “strategic partner” of the United States. A series of initiatives in the last three months have been directed against Beijing—moves toward a US missile defense focused on China, reversal of US policy for a rapprochement with North Korea, and plans to supply sophisticated naval and air weaponry to Taiwan.

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Priorities

I spotted this quote by Tom Friedman on Daily Dish:

China is doing moon shots. Yes, that’s plural. When I say “moon shots” I mean big, multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing investments. China has at least four going now: one is building a network of ultramodern airports; another is building a web of high-speed trains connecting major cities; a third is in bioscience...; and, finally, Beijing just announced that it was providing $15 billion in seed money for the country’s leading auto and battery companies to create an electric car industry... Not to worry. America today also has its own multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing moon shot: fixing Afghanistan.
The story doesn't end with this helpful and insightful quote. Perhaps, the above quote is an attempt by Friedman to attempt to redeem himself for his pro-war rhetoric from prior years. He has himself to thank for the fact that the U.S. warmongering mentality has caused us to fall so far behind China. And we continue to fall behind China because we can't wake up from our nightmare in which relatively few people armed with unsophisticated weapons such as box-cutters are deemed more dangerous than the Soviet Union at its height, armed with thousands of nuclear warheads. Thus, we will continue to spend more than half of our federal tax revenue on military pursuits. Our exuberant and delusional warmongering is killing our economy and our future.

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