Would it be too pessimistic to say that one can no longer be an optimist? I prefer to believe it is. Hopefully, we have recognized our follies in the nick of time. As Stirling infers, we need to swim in a new direction: this we must do together because if we don't, we will sink together.

Those who don't admit the problem.

Those who don't admit the problem can be met.

We must all work together, our survival is at stake. It looks like we have reached the knee in the curve of warming; it goes straight up from here.

Climate change doesn't threaten our existence as a species, but it does mean that our present political and economic arrangements have got to go. We can handle that transition well, or poorly. Poorly means a global war over land and water and dwindling cheap hydrocarbons.

People can live in a very different world than the one we live in now, however, our current economic system with its low risk bands, cannot.

- EOM

and is taking power to deal with that dire emergency.

America is not engaged in a civil war which will leave three quarters of a million dead.

We are not in the depths of a Great Depression that has left 25% of the workforce unemployed.

We are not colonies of a distant king.

There is a dark pit of the abyss where everyone knows that it is join or die. We are not there. But we will get there if we do not act.

That he has done a terrible job and made problems worse by attacking Iraq?

That his plan to attack Iran will end in tragedy, perhaps a world war?

That his focus on war will keep us from doing the things that need to be done in other arenas like environment/global warming/alternative energy studies, etc?

Bush still thinks war is the answer to everything. And that we can win by killing "the enemy".

Liberals think they can stop him by writing letters to the editor or passing a few laws. Waiting for '08 elections.

I don't.

Bush is likely to have our military attacking Iran in a matter of months. When he does, best laid plans will amount to nothing.

The depression to come is likely to be worse than the previous one. The climatic changes are likely to be worse than dust bowl days. America will learn of famine like never before. I suspect the war to come will kill many more than three quarters of a million.

Etc.

Bush isn't doing anything to stop this emergency, he's helping to create it.

I did inhale.

What Stirling is saying is that if we're in an emergency that is going to end civilization if we don't throw everything at it, then the President will use that as his reason for seizing dictatorial powers.

That's why "Islamo-fascism" has been turned into a huge generational war - so power can be seized to deal with it.

already believes he has authority to attack Iran. I don't know the law but I believe he can commence attacks for 60 days before consulting congress, can he not? The second air-craft carrier group is on its way right now.

Israel probably launches the attack and we'll be sitting there in a support role, nice and legal.

Iran counterattacks.

And bush rises to defend the world. Says I told you we were going to need those permanent bases in Iraq.

The administration is already issuing warnings as though Iran is the aggressor. And that idiot president Iran has is playing right into his hand.

Here's what I really find troubling.

It might work for a time. Give Americans some really cool blow the shit out of them pictures again, they get the taste of blood in the mouth...

Won't be any invasion exept along the coast near the Straight of Hormuz.

We got rid of the nuclear threat...

I did inhale.

hard at work to stop bush.

Edwards: Iran Serious Threat

"Iran is serious about its threats," former US Senator John Edwards has told an audience in Israel.

"The challenges in your own backyard – represent an unprecedented threat to the world and Israel," the candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination told the Herzliya Conference, referring mainly to the Iranian threat.

In his speech, Edwards criticised the United States' previous indifference to the Iranian issue, saying they have not done enough to deal with the threat.

Hinting to possible military action, Edwards stressed that "in order to ensure Iran never gets nuclear weapons, all options must remain on table."

On the recent UN Security Council's resolution against Iran, Edwards said more serious political and economic steps should be taken. "Iran must know that the world won’t back down," he said.

Addressing the second Lebanon war , Edwards accused the Islamic Republic of having a significant role, saying Hizbullah was an instrument of Iran, and Iranian rockets were what made the organization's attack on Israel possible.

Edwards also discussed Syria's recent calls for peace with Israel, saying that "talk is cheap," and that Syria was not doing enough to prove it was serious.

The former senator also said that Syria has been a great source of destabilization in the area, from its support of Hizbullah and Hamas, to its relationship with Iran, and for this it should be held accountable.

After opening his speech with great praise for Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Edward's continued to express great appreciation for the Israeli people and the special bond between the two countries, saying it was "a bond that will never be broken."

On the three Israel Defense Force soldiers who are being held captive by Hizbullah in Lebanon and Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, Edwards said, "It is well past time for their return home."

He continued to say that Israel has made many concessions in order to advance peace, including the Disengagement plan, adding that despite Israel's willingness to return to negotiations, little has been seen on the Palestinian side.

Edwards also spoke against the Palestinian Authority, saying the Hamas government was no partner, and that Israel should make efforts to strengthen Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas against Hamas.

He also said the Palestinian government must know that foreign aid should not be take for granted, and that the US and Europe must do everything possible to make sure the money does not go to terrorists.

Until Israel has a real partner, according to Edwards, Israel has the right, and indeed the obligation to defend itself, and should be strengthened militarily, politically, and economically.

In a further display of support for Israel, Edwards went so far as to suggest that Israel should even be made a member of NATO, saying it was only natural that the organization would seen to include Israel next.

I did inhale.

Yup, that's bloody awful. I like Edwards on domestic issues, but on foreign ones he's awful. Everyone has to kiss the Iraeli lobbies butt, of course, but being onside for Iran is not required.

Everyone wants to be a big swinging dick. Tiresome, and that's not how it works.

Means free trade, deregulation and free markets.

This isn't that.

As for building on the wreckage of Bush, that is going to be true of anything we build. Iraq isn't going to go away. Even when our military presence there ends.

...(or more properly, these prognostications on consequences) simply as collateral damage?

Sorry about the "Neo" - wasn't thinking about the formal meaning of the term.

"At this moment, therefore, two distinct myths emerged, fuelled by the trauma of a shared experience and amplified by the existence of a hungry mass media eager to disseminate images of the world's first televised revolution." - Ali Ansari

Iraq is the policy which proves to the public that the old ways do not work, will not work and cannot be made to work. Iraq is also the legal means by which Bush usurps power which is not properly his.

There is a great deal of collateral damage from the old ways, Iraq is merely a visible and bleeding example of it. As was New Orleans, as is Darfur - as is the Lakes-Congo conflicts which has left many times more people dead, as are the mega slums of the world which keep hundreds of millions of people in abject destitution and misery.

Right now, we cannot do anything substansive about any of these symptoms, or their underlying causes, we must first right the ship of state.

That involves ending the wrong headed and disastrous intervention in Iraq, and the wrong headed and disastrous excessive powers of the executive. Since they are related, they must be dealt with together.

"At this moment, therefore, two distinct myths emerged, fuelled by the trauma of a shared experience and amplified by the existence of a hungry mass media eager to disseminate images of the world's first televised revolution." - Ali Ansari

The UN should be in Afghanistan.

...mandate. Without NATO as a command backbone most of the players would not have committed their forces - they've seen UN command before and they didn't want to see it again in a higher intensity environment.

"At this moment, therefore, two distinct myths emerged, fuelled by the trauma of a shared experience and amplified by the existence of a hungry mass media eager to disseminate images of the world's first televised revolution." - Ali Ansari

...advocate the removal of American forces from Afghanistan? Is the Sept. 2001 AUMF to be replaced with something else?

"At this moment, therefore, two distinct myths emerged, fuelled by the trauma of a shared experience and amplified by the existence of a hungry mass media eager to disseminate images of the world's first televised revolution." - Ali Ansari

then decide what to do about Afghanistan.

The public is generally able to conduct one discussion at one time.

...Iraq and the rest, and in particular between Afghanistan and the broader "War on a Tactic" they may well need to have more than one simultaneous conversation. I'd note that while America may have faced graver moments, I can't think of events in my lifetime that have had graver implications for the post-war and particularly the post-Soviet security system. Any liberalism which does not make explicit note of that will be viewed with great distrust by decision makers beyond the shores of the United States, no matter how much native sympathy they may have with its ideals.

"At this moment, therefore, two distinct myths emerged, fuelled by the trauma of a shared experience and amplified by the existence of a hungry mass media eager to disseminate images of the world's first televised revolution." - Ali Ansari

because it has been made unwinnable. Afghanistan is more complex, because there are more options. The guiding principle ennunciated above - to do as much good as it is possible to do - will work in Afghanistan and, eventually, in Iraq.

...come up with a different way of putting that. Emphasis on doing good and belief that the United States is a force for good in the world have become irrevocably associated with neo-con belief in the eyes of foreign observers of late I'm afraid. To many external observers, statements of guiding principles are not going to be enough to quiet fears - if the last six years have taught us anything, it is that how principles are translated operationally matters a very, very great deal.

"At this moment, therefore, two distinct myths emerged, fuelled by the trauma of a shared experience and amplified by the existence of a hungry mass media eager to disseminate images of the world's first televised revolution." - Ali Ansari

Democracy and Freedom too.

We cannot be defined by the failures of our enemies.

...on any of these things, my point is that how one pursues them matters.

"At this moment, therefore, two distinct myths emerged, fuelled by the trauma of a shared experience and amplified by the existence of a hungry mass media eager to disseminate images of the world's first televised revolution." - Ali Ansari

Lying or crazy, or both. What is in ill repute, justifiably so, is American unilateralism, or even more specifically, goonerlateralism - the belief that we do the most good by bombing people into a Heironymous Bosch painting.

The idea of doing good around the world, to the extent that it is possible, has not been discredited, the language of mouthing platitudes while pursuing the interests of a few elites has.

Remove the interest in upholding the economics of a dead century, and the interest in making trouble in the name of making life easy for US corporations is far smaller. I won't pretend that people will be angels, but it is a great deal harder to soar with the angels with wings covered in petroleum sludge.

...both crazy and lying to themselves. This is what happens when one a) believes that the realities of the seminar room and the battlefield are identical and b) is in love with the sound of one's own voice. [b) I have problems with, a) not so much]

More seriously (and this is the theme that I've been eliciting all through the thread), I would point out that in the eyes of much of the rest of the world, precipitous talk about withdrawing the AUMFs and leaving Iraq without delay, without referrent to the vital interests of allies, would be viewed as another example of American unilateralism.

Edited to add:

Near as I can see, the thing that scares foreign political elites more than anything else is that the US is going to pull back and leave the international system without the soft-landing option they desperately hope they can fabricate. They know that serious transitions are going to happen - I strongly suspect that they'd prefer it to happen in the context of a natural succession of the American electoral process, not some form of regime change.

"At this moment, therefore, two distinct myths emerged, fuelled by the trauma of a shared experience and amplified by the existence of a hungry mass media eager to disseminate images of the world's first televised revolution." - Ali Ansari

if the philosophies of the neocons have anything whatsoever to do with "emphasis on doing good and belief that the United States is a force for good in the world", then please God, hear my prayer, may I never live to see a future where a doctrine of "pure power-hungry self-interest" gets into power in America.

I see nothing idealistic about the neocon vision whatsoever (not in the sense I'd use the word; "ambitious" yes, "idealistic" never). It's ruthlessly hegemonic with a thick PR-based woodge of "let's do good" platitudes slathered atop it. "Us first" isn't an ideal; if it were, we'd have to say e.coli has ideals.

It has little to do with "doing good".

It has less than nothing to do with "democracy" (and never did, not from Day One) and everything to do with wrapping in whatever slogans will sell to the American citizenry in order to minimize and wedge domestic revulsion. The Straussian "noble lie" writ large.

One might give more credit to their apparent enthusiam for democracy if one examined the neocons from the microcosm (their own internal hierarchy) to the macrocosm (rejection of international-level democracy as expressed by the UN or ICC) and found a single trace of it manifested on any level, in any aspect of their existence.

They're just Cecil Rhodes and Napoleon wannabes at best - thugs who haven't learned to wipe their mouths on the napkins rather than the drapes at worst.

I strongly doubt I'm the only observer who sees that as completely antithetical to American idealism rather than some cancerous outgrowth of it.

Good description of it as any.

...Mann's The Rise of the Vulcans. Yeah, absolutely they were idealists - that's why the rest of the world is awfully goddamned skeptical about idealists right now.

"At this moment, therefore, two distinct myths emerged, fuelled by the trauma of a shared experience and amplified by the existence of a hungry mass media eager to disseminate images of the world's first televised revolution." - Ali Ansari

...in the realm of statecraft "idealist" is generally not a compliment. Interests I trust - ideals are all too frequently revealed as transitory ether.

"At this moment, therefore, two distinct myths emerged, fuelled by the trauma of a shared experience and amplified by the existence of a hungry mass media eager to disseminate images of the world's first televised revolution." - Ali Ansari