StephenKMackSD's Blog

One simply has to marvel at Mr. O’Hanlon’s exercise in hagiography and apologetics. It reminds me of the late Joe Alsop, and his long line of political enthusiasms. See Edwin Yoder’s Joe Alsop’s Cold War and the gossip fest disguised as social history, The Gerogetown Set by Gregg Herken, for a full exposition of those enthusiasms and their exorbitant costs.
One is tempted to say that the new world of Think Tanks has spawned Joe Alsops by the score, careerists, self-promoters more than willing to do the political spade work necessary to manufacture the new heroes, not to speak of their care and maintenance, in the Age of the Internet.
One is also reminded of the Bundy brothers chronicled in The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms  by Kai Bird as the policy experts that helped to usher in one of Mr. Alsop’s final political enthusiasms, the Vietnam War.

In that vein this paragraph shouldn’t surprise as an extended apologetic for the Iraq War and it’s political/military enactors :

To be sure, Petraeus didn’t do it alone—and he was always quick to share the credit. Among the people he raved about most, when we used to go for runs or when various think tanks like mine would host him for discussions about the war on his visits home in 2007-2008, were General Stanley McChrystal, who ramped up American special operations orders of magnitude above where it had been before; HR McMaster, then a relatively junior officer among the first to make proper counterinsurgency tactics work in Iraq even before the surge; Seth Moulton and Ann Gildroy Fox, young Marine Corps reservists who tried to catalyze a Shia awakening of sorts in eastern Iraq (Moulton is now a Congressman from Massachusetts); General Ray Odierno and General Lloyd Austin, who directed the surge at the operational level; General Jim Dubik and General Marty Dempsey, who ran the training programs for Iraqi forces in those crucial times; General John Allen, who among other Marine Corps leaders was crucial in nurturing the Sunni awakening process in al-Anbar province; and Petraeus’s main civilian counterpart, Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

This dream team refashioned the Iraqi Security Forces and their leadership, then worked with them to bring down violence rates in Iraq an incredible 90 percent and give Iraqi leaders a chance to turn their country around. That change, tragically, was largely squandered in ensuing years, but Petraeus and Crocker et al gave them the chance. On balance, this was arguably the greatest military comeback in American history, after four successive years of losing the war.

Following this is an assurance from Mr. O’ Hanlon of the integrity,veracity and trustworthiness of the Patraeus/Broadwell alliance: This in in the face of the charge of leaking top secret information, for which others have served jail time. Forty thousand dollars and two years probation were the lot of Mr. O’Hanlon’s friend. Such is the political/legal fate of a Hero and National Treasure as narrated by his friend and political defender, who, we are assured , has not made his last contribution to the flourishing of The American Empire.

Political Skeptic

Mr. Gass, in his essay misses the point of the incident: the Republican Party in it’s post 9-11 phase and it’s two losses to Obama, has lapsed into a consistent political hysteria mongering. Yet it is also consistent with the post WWII politics of the Nixon/Mundt/McCarthy/McCarren political cabal, and the notion of ‘a generation of treason’ in the Post-War, post New Deal era of American life.
Senator Cruz’s politics are shot through with political/ethical paranoia and he is the paradigmatic politician, the vanguard of that modern Republican Party. That is a truly frightening political reality to confront, so Mr. Gass opts to use his comment as an ineffective political analgesic.

Political Cynic

Call Mr. Luce a dramaturge that can’t resist the temptation of producing melodrama instead of it’s more virtuous sibling. The first paragraph of his essay posits the notions of: The multilateral Iran negotiations as being Obama’s biggest foreign policy gamble, the president ignores domestic opposition, read the notorious Cotton letter signed by 47 Republican Senators, allied to near unanimous Middle East dissent, this locution a stand in for Israel and it’s domestic political allies, AIPAC etc. The first paragraph leads to the second that includes these gems, I paraphrase: the political notion that President Bush tried to impose ‘democracy’ at the point of a gun, instead of another American colony/outpost  and that President Obama is his sub rosa ally. The Luce political schizophrenia is on full display, as the remainder of the essay is a grudging recognition of  President Obama’s political wisdom, although Mr. Luce makes his judgement out of an all pervasive negativity.

Political Realist

It’s hard to be patient with David Brooks! He never tires of excising his felt prerogatives as Platonic Guardian, combined with his self-awarded status as Old Testament Prophet and the self-appointed inheritor of the mantle of Walter Lippmann. The pretension, not to  speak of egotism, is hard to contemplate, except that we as readers are fully cognizant that he was mentored by William F. Buckley Jr.!
It’s hard to reply to his ersatz philosophizing, his tired carping moralizing and effort to impart political wisdom, refracted through a vocabulary of a vulgarized Sociology, which adds a certain gloss to his public musings, at least to some of his readers.
Look at the Conservatives at the New York Times: Mr. Brooks, Ultramontane Catholic Ross Douthat, who also reviews movies for National Review, and the newest addition,at least to me, Arthur C. Brooks of The American Enterprise Institute. In their various essay they seem to echo each other in subject and tone, while writing on diverse topics. Moral decline, The decline of the American Family, Mr. Douthat’s twin obsessions, out of wed-lock births and the declining birthrate as a whole, the decline of American power, and endless Neo-Liberal apologetics. Add to this a continuous stream of a more sophisticated iteration of Republican Party propaganda.

Political Skeptic

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/for-david-brooks-the-rich-are-people-the-poor-are-numbers-20150311?utm_source=newsletter&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=031215_16&utm_medium=email&ea=c3RlcGhlbmttYWNrQGdtYWlsLmNvbQ==

As reported in these pages on January 16, 2015 by Ms. Tett on an after-dinner address by Benjamin Friedman:

Ms. Tett’s essay:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/927efd1e-9c32-11e4-b9f8-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3UDJlb8Se

The PDF of Prof. Friedman’s remarks:

Click to access friedman.pdf

The Germans are wont to forget their own troubled history of debt forgiveness,1924, 1929, 1932 and 1953. Perhaps the Germans are as equally forgetful of their war reparations debt to the Greek nation? Mr Tsipras is just as ardent to remind the Germans, that it’s status as Economic Powerhouse of Europe was built on a self-serving act of historical amnesia? Playing Politics is not just for the Economic victors of Neo-Liberalism, but for all those with sufficient historical memory  and the will to assert that memory at the propitious moment.

Almost Marx

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/8c9db3c6-c8d4-11e4-bc64-00144feab7de.html#axzz3UDJlb8Se

The President may enter into treaties, the advise and consent occurs after the fact of the negotiation, not before!
The proper place for the Cotton letter was, as others have pointed out in this ongoing debate, the Wall Street Journal or another such conservative publication: not as a direct communication to one of the parties of that negotiation, that can be characterized as the American antagonist. The political intent of the Cotton missive was not just to embarrass, but to hold the President up to international ridicule,with the intent to engage in sedition of a presidential prerogative, pure and simple. The Republican Party is in the thrall of a practice of a destructive political nihilism, and Cotton and his Neo-Con mentors, like William Kristol, have overstepped the bounds of the idea and practice of the ‘loyal opposition’, into the territory of the friend/enemy distinction that animated the political thought of Carl Schmitt!

StephenKMackSD

http://www.economist.com/node/21646189/comments#comments

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has some compelling observations to make on Sen. Cotton’s letter:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/03/12/world/middleeast/ap-ml-iran-us-congress.html?_r=0

Some selected quotes:

‘Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the letter a sign of “the collapse of political ethics and the U.S. system’s internal disintegration,” according to the official IRNA news agency.’
‘Khamenei said states typically remain loyal to their commitments even if governments change, ” but American senators officially announced the commitment will be null and void after this government leaves office. Isn’t this the ultimate degree of the collapse of political ethics and the U.S. system’s internal disintegration?” ‘
‘Khamenei said that whenever the talks approach a deadline, “the tone of the other party, particularly the Americans, becomes harsher, harder and more violent. This is part of their tricks and deceits.” ‘

And this little gem:

‘The supreme leader said a “Zionist clown” had delivered a speech in Washington, an apparent reference to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress earlier this month, in which he argued against the emerging agreement.’

The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s telling powers of  observation, combined with a practiced polemical brio, make his comments of much more interest than this utterly bland Economist essay, that resembles a disguised apologetics for the nihilist Republican’s subversion of the President’s Constitutional prerogatives!
Political Skeptic

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21646189-republican-letter-makes-diplomacy-harder-dear-ayatollah

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/03/10-congress-letter-iran-nuclear-deal

Let some fresh air into the Brookings Vatican, the stale ‘leadership’ @StrobeTalbott as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith demonstrates the fact that this Old Cold Warrior, and his epigones like @MaloneySuzanne are educated/indoctrinated and certified by each other to parrot to ever-changing Party Line: the current Political Theology being expressed in the last paragraph of Ms. Maloney’s doctrinaire recitation, couched in speculation, which in sum is a defense of the Cotton letter and it’s signatories :

‘Ultimately, the loss of the good opinion of a few Democrats is a small price to pay if the letter hits its real target. The most reliable opponent of a nuclear deal resides in Tehran, and it is entirely possible that the Republican letter has reinforced his aversion to compromise. Washington’s pundits may jeer, but I worry that Senator Cotton & co. may yet have the last laugh.’

‘…the loss of the good opinion of a few Democrats…’ tips Ms. Maloney’s hand!
For an alternative see Philip Weiss’ essay here for a more plausible speculation of the origin of the Cotton Letter:

Senator who spearheaded letter to Iran got $1 million from Kristol’s ‘Emergency C’tee for Israel’

‘I don’t know who wrote the letter, but I can tell you whose fingerprints are on it: the only folks who are supporting it publicly, the hard-right Israel lobby. Even as Cotton himself splutters on national television, rightwing lobby groups are the main voices out there defending the letter.
Like Bill Kristol of the Emergency Committee for Israel:
Cotton open letter: “Just so you know, we’re a constitutional democracy. Congress (or next president) has a say.” Dem response: Hysteria.
J Street’s Dylan Williams fingers Bill Kristol for writing the letter:
Who gave @SenTomCotton & others the awful idea for the Iran letter? Seems like Sarah Palin-for-VP-level bad advice doesn’t it @BillKristol ?
There’s a reason for Williams’s suspicion. Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel gave Tom Cotton nearly $1 million in his race for the Senate just five months ago, Eli Clifton reported. “Cotton received $960,250 in supportive campaign advertising in the last month.” (Thanks to Kay24 in comments).

Political Skeptic

Here is the law very clearly stated and the link:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/953

‘Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply, himself or his agent, to any foreign government or the agents thereof for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.’

Sen. Cotton and his senatorial allies have not just breached a tradition but have broken the law! The law states it unambiguously, except for the exceptionalist claim that is the genesis of this letter! The desperation of the Nihilist Republicans, not content with the making Foreign Policy by inviting a head of state, Mr. Netanyahu, to address a  joint session of Congress , but now seek to subvert the power of the President of the United States to make treaties with other nations! Lawless political nihilism is the order of the day in this once Republic!

StephenKMackSD

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/aca7c0d0-c6a4-11e4-a13d-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3Tpp8Y1TZ

Austerity and structural reform are the one true way to salvation, they insist. As Merkel put it in 2013: “What we have done, everyone else can do.”

Even with Mr. Ash’s three provisos this is still Neo-Liberalism. Note the idea of ‘structural reform’ as indicative of that Neo-Liberalism at it’s most formulaic?
But recall, for all the Teutonic self-congratulation and or to call it at it’s most vulgar, bootstrapping of Ms. Merkel, that Germany was bailed out in 1924, 1929, 1932 and 1953. See the essay by Gillian Tett at the Financial Times of January 16, 2015:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/927efd1e-9c32-11e4-b9f8-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3Tpp8Y1TZ
A report on an address by Benjamin M. Friedman titled A Predictable Pathology.The PDF is here:

Click to access friedman.pdf

Mr. Ash is an historian, and yet such a potent piece of evidence is excluded from the melodramatic story of the destiny of Europe and it’s self-creation, the monetary union. And that it should come from the house organ of Capitalist Apologetics is surprising, to say the least.
From my perspective, it will take two generations to fully purge the Neo-Liberal Collective’s political/ethical delusion from what remains of our civic life and institutions, and most importantly from our very process of thought!

Almost Marx

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/08/europe-monetary-union-fiscal-political-anger-south