Intellectual dishonesty in politics is a parasite in search of an ambitious host. The transformation that takes place inside the body of an infected politician, especially one hanging onto someone else’s coattails for dear life, is embarrassing to witness first hand. Their allegiance to this other person and what they can provide is a phenomenon that is automatically given a pass within the beltway. The pundits seem oblivious when a most celebrated mind devolves into a shadowy Frankenstein’s monster right in front of them. Unnoticed, so the smart puppeteers wrongly believe, this change is the type of thing that forever alters a plebe’s impression of such a politician. We can see it quite clearly. In General Wesley Clark’s case it has been gut wrenching. He’s is clearly a lightweight when it comes to telling lies, and that, along with being on a panel with Andrew Sullivan, is what doomed him last Friday on Real Time w/ Bill Maher.
Here is how it happens. The word comes down that a cabinet slot could be yours in two years – heck, it’s yours now, of course it would be presumptuous to announce such a thing at this point, but consider yourself part of the “inner circle”. Isn’t it nice in here? We’re glad you like it…so what we need you to do is go out and argue in favor of these votes and positions Senator Clinton has already committed to. Of course, we’re in campaign mode right now, which is entirely different from how the administration will be run once she’s elected President. Right now your input will not be as helpful as what you can do for us working the talk shows. Once the election is over, you can count on having a significant role in policymaking, but for now, review these talking points we’ve put together for defending Hillary’s vote in favor of branding Iran’s military as a terrorist organization.
That was an idea the White House had, and since it was proposed in the senate by Joe Lieberman, you just know it’s brilliant. So say all those Jews and Christians who merged at a conference organized around the idea of dropping bombs on Iran. It was an energetic festival featuring a blood-thirsty rabble, collectively longing for mass murder, holy war and more of whatever Senator Lieberman was there to say. Indeed, he was a keynote speaker at this thing. The point being, he’s a sucker for attention and for quite a while now, has been advertising his intention. No matter, once the Clinton camp had run everything through the algorithm, holy war and mass murder were considered spinable issues, while the opportunity to tap into a red demographic was too sexy to resist.
Paul O’Neil was told by Cheney that “deficits don’t matter”, and now we’re being told by Hillary Clinton that “wars don’t matter”. The connection that can be made between her vote in favor of the Lieberman/Kyl amendment and her earlier vote to authorize the President to murder Iraq is obvious. Wesley Clark can earn himself a cabinet seat if he’s able to help convince you and me otherwise. More troubling to me than all that, is how this example might be a real glimpse into the ideological underpinnings of our next Democratic President.
The premise that Clinton and 74 of her fellow senators (most notably: Whitehouse, Schumer, Landrieu & Durbin) are comfortable legitimizing, is that America’s foreign policy playbook should include unilaterally threatening to murder smaller states halfway across the globe whenever we feel like it. Lieberman/Kyl is a product of the same poisonous ideology that has thus far resulted in miraculous miscalculations, enormous debt and suffering, and perhaps the worst possible start to the 21st century anyone could have imagined. As the theory went, because of our untouchable military superiority, as a rule, international laws, treaties and norms should be ignored. Diplomacy should only take place when American interests are guaranteed to be advanced, and states that behave badly must be punished with bombs, not coddled with non-violent attention.
On Bill Maher’s show Wesley Clark spoke of the need for a hammer to go along with our diplomacy. The metaphor is misleading, and possibly an effort to work on the subconscious of a voter who really liked Tom Delay. A much better description of what we’re doing here would be that we need to have a bloody knife up to Iran’s throat – to go along with our diplomacy. Considering the price of a barrel of oil, how many dollars you can buy with a Euro, our broken military and the trillions in debt we’re racking up for our grandchildren to deal with, I’d even go so far as comparing our posture towards Iran with that of a suicide bomber.
That’s right, because not only are we ensuring that Russia and China benefit at our expense, but if history has taught me anything when it comes to the United States military, it’s that our satellite photos aren’t nearly as smart as all those little ants showing up on them. We’ll drop bombs and murder thousands of innocent people, mistaking day care centers for anthrax factories, and when the photos show up in the international press, someone like Wesley Clark will be on camera somewhere denouncing how badly the President has miscalculated…