At Bush’s recent press conference, he was asked the following by a reporter:

Mr. President, you mentioned the prospect that your successor would be dealing with the war.

You’ll be making your first trip to Vietnam in roughly a week. Some people are looking at the war as another Vietnam War. Are they wrong to do so? And, if so, why?

Bush gives an absurd response that totally misses why the Vietnam War is considered a disaster (that the President’s refusal to acknowledge his goals were unachievable led to the unnecessary deaths of thousands upon thousands of Americans and Vietnamese). This isn’t surprising, considering how many times he’s demonstrated his proud ignorance of history and lack of interest in learning. But the part that stuck out to me came in the middle of his response:

Secondly — which is different from Vietnam — secondly, in terms of our troops, this is a volunteer Army. Vietnam wasn’t a volunteer Army, as you know. And in this volunteer Army, people — the troops understand the consequences of Iraq in the global war on terror.

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Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life. - Terry Pratchett

This Cato@Liberty post represents why I stopped self-identifying as a libertarian sometime around the age of 14.

Is global warming insurance a good buy? Probably not. And that’s particularly true given the fact that the relative poor (us) will pay the premium so that the relatively rich (our children and grandchildren) will get the benefits if there are any.

For ‘global warming insurance’, he means investing money in combating global warming. If I’m reading this correctly, he’s saying we shouldn’t do anything about global warming now because our children will get the benefits and they will be statistically wealthier than us, so fuck them they can pay for it themselves. Bootstraps, teach a man to fish, etc… Nevermind that this ‘insurance’ is a one-time offer not even available to our kids.

NOTE: prior to the move to the new domain, we had several thoughtful critiques of this post. Unfortunately they did not survive the transition. Their omission is not intended as censorship, but is instead a reflection of my poor MySQL managing skills.

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A few weeks ago, the economist ran this article on one of Ecuador’s presidential hopefuls, Rafael Correa. Correa, a member of the fledgling party Alianza PAIS (which is loosely affiliated with the Ecuadorian Socialist Party) promises to join the growing ranks of Latin American leftist leaders such as Brazil’s Lula, Chavez in Venezuela, and Morales in Bolivia. In Ecuador’s primary election, Correa trailed only slightly behind Alvaro Noboa, a prominent banana industry magnate. While I feel that the article might have understated the increasing salience of leftist politics in Latin America, it does do a good job of illuminating some of the peculiarly Ecuadorian challenges that Correa will face, even if he wins the election, most notably perhaps: the historical prominence of the urban middle class in populist movements, an entrenched and powerful coastal elite, and Ecuador’s precarious geopolitical position along Colombia’s troubled southern border (and the concommittant military presence of the United States in the Manta military base).

Correa’s promises to purge Ecuador’s political system of rampant corruption is well taken by the majority of Ecuadorians (especially in light of the actions of former-president, Lucio Gutierrez, early in 2005), the feat of restructuring Ecuador’s party-dominated political system will be difficult to achieve through constitutional means. The election of the leftist leader in Ecuador, and his proposal for constituent assembly, could also revive the specter of authoritarianism as well as the possibility that the multiplicity of leftist voices will be squelched as they have been in Brazil under Lula (who was recently re-elected).

On the other hand, by seeking alliances with Venezuela, Ecuador could, at least partially, shake off the hegemony of the Washington Consensus, which has profoundly shaped Ecuadorian policy since the late 1980’s. By trading, as it did briefly during Correa’s stint as finance minister under current president Alfredo Palacios, bonds for Venezuelan technology and equipment, Ecuador could potentially leverage greater control over and profit from its oil industry. At any rate, things are still undecided. Stay tuned…Noboa and Correa will face each other in a runoff on November 26th.

-Lorien

I really enjoy Andrew Sullivan’s site and seeing him on television. Maybe it’s because he seems more loyal to his principles than to his party, unlike the other members of the 101st Fighting Keyboards. I don’t know how much of a barometer he really is for conservative opinion, but it makes me feel better knowing that there’s active conservative intellectuals that aren’t totally consumed by their make-believe worlds.

However, thats not to say Mr. Sullivan doesn’t say some odd things now and again, such as this choice quote (I’m assuming he’s not being sarcastic):

Thanks, Ken. You’re a patriot. You’ve told the truth about men whom you know and care about. Because America comes first.

He’s of course referring to Ken Adelman, the neocon ‘thinker’ and Bush’s former deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations who – while hyping up an invasion that clearly was not in America’s best interests – infamously said:

I believe that demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. This President Bush does not need to amass rinky-dink nations as ‘coalition partners’ to convince the Washington establishment that we’re right.

Now what is it that Adelman has done for Sullivan to label him a ‘patriot’? What every other neocon has already done in the last 12 months: try to exculpate himself from any responsibility for the Iraq fiasco, while also trying to salvage what he can of the neocon dream of remaking the world through military force. This isn’t new, in fact the neocons are shamelessly biting the Incompetence Dodge pioneered by ‘liberal’ hawks like Thomas Friedman and John Kerry.

You can read Matthew Yglesias’s blog for a more succinct take on this ‘patriot’. And yes, everyone I agree with is named Matthew. I’m cliquey like that.

This is older, but worth reading for anyone who hasn’t had a chance. For the best dissection of New York Times resident bonehead, Thomas Friedman, read Taibbi’s review of his idiotic book “The World is Flat”. Oh, and here is the brilliant comic by David Rees that originally accompanied the article.

I’ll never forget watching Oprah one day when Friedman was a guest. His criticism of our foreign policy was that “we need to start exporting our hopes, instead of our fears.” What a chowderhead.

- Matthew

When I reflect on all that’s gone wrong in this country, it’s hard for me to blame George W. Bush; or for that matter Rumsfeld, Rove, Cheney, Gonzales or Rice. These days, I even have difficultly mustering more than a mild disappointment in Christopher Hitchens. No, the people that really get me mad, the ones I blame for Iraq and torture and everything else, are the mushy middle. The majority of voting-age Americans that excuse their sacred duty as citizens on the grounds of being too distracted, too busy; though not too busy to spend $10 billion a year on video games, or about $8 billion a year in movie ticket sales, or indulging in whatever other endless number of unproductive distractions.

Sure, there is more and more of a burden on working families that make it hard to allot time to keeping up with politics, but anyone that has the time to vote, or talk to a pollster, has the time to sit down and really think about what it would mean to go to war. If about 35 million people had the free time to sit through five hours and the seven endings of ‘Return of the King’ in 2003, they CERTAINLY had time that year to do a little independent research on the ramifications sending a couple hundred thousand young Americans into a violently hostile country on the other side of the planet.

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