Publishing Note

UGOB is having trouble with my ethernet drivers and I've been unable to maintain a dependable net connection. This has interrupted the publishing schedule I attempt to keep. I'm working on it.

But here's an interesting dilemma: most of the recommended repair strategies require net access.

Free Speech! Offer Ends Soon!

As previously noted (Free speech isn’t free, June 9, 2010)

In every way, the first major problem with politics is money.

Primarily, our elected federal officials (we’ll stick to discussing the federal system for now) need considerable money for their election and re-election campaigns. In many cases, this means millions upon millions of dollars. In almost all campaigns, this money is donated by individuals and groups concerned with—and now invested in—the outcome of the election.

Two questions come to mind:

• What do the donors expect as a result of their contributions?

• What is the candidate willing to do to attract more donations?

Let’s see now, shall we take the high road or the low road?

Tell you what—I’m willing to bet that you can imagine the scenery along either route, so let’s just skip a bunch of superfluous prose. But I will put some spin on it:

Basically, what we uphold for our elected federal officials is a system of legalized bribery.

It is, perhaps, the fairest, most regulated, openly divested bribery system that humankind has yet devised—but it is still bribery. We have proudly institutionalized corruption and venality. (Aren’t we just the greatest country in the world?)

Unhappily, under a Constitution designed to guarantee rule by law and a one person-one vote system, this muddies things up considerably. The entire elective structure appears to be influenced by that freakish derangement of the Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.

Our toleration of this system says all that needs to be said about our political ideals and social morals.

So here’s what I propose —

 UGOB EDIT NOTE: The finance system that I had intended to outline here, having relevant similarities to the one mentioned below, appears to have been made moot by a federal appeals court decision this past Tuesday. The following excerpt from a Wednesday New York Times article summarizes the situation.

The Connecticut decision, by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, struck down the “trigger provision” of the state’s campaign finance system, which allowed extra public funds for candidates running against opponents who do not participate in the system and who spend more than the system’s limits. The more the rich candidate spends, the more public money his or her opponent gets. Though the playing field is hardly even, the law does give nonwealthy candidates a fighting chance to compete.

The appeals court found that the campaign finance system violated the First Amendment rights of wealthy candidates. Never mind that nothing in the system prohibited such candidates from speaking or spending all they want; the court said that by awarding additional funds to opponents, the system caused a self-financed candidate to “shoulder a special and potentially significant burden if she chooses to exercise her First Amendment right to spend personal funds on her campaign.”

Here is the lesson I take from this: the First Amendment guarantees free speech, not equal speech. Or something. Maybe this will be appealed to the Supreme Court. Even so ...

Back to the drawing board.

How to win friends and influence people who want to kill us.

Here’s what happened in Afghanistan: we took a highly influential, right-wing, religious fundamentalist political party, the Taliban, from being quasi-rulers and turned them into mountain guerillas who are in little danger of extinction. We did this by destroying or capturing their governing infrastructure while allowing a sizeable portion of their personnel to escape. Nonetheless, if our goal was to remove the Taliban from control in Afghanistan so that major al-Qaeda terrorist groups no longer enjoyed government protection, then we succeeded.

What can we do now?

Plan A. Declare victory. Withdraw our troops from Afghanistan. If the Taliban successfully reoccupy their former stations and decide to support more international terrorism, then do the same thing we did before, but try not to let anyone escape this time.

Plan B. Escalate our current military response. Scorch the earth wherever there are Taliban to be found. And then, because it will be the obvious next problem, find all of their relatives and kill them, too. Then kill anyone else likely to be sympathetic to Taliban beliefs or who are related to the innocent bystanders who were killed collaterally in the scorched earth campaign. After that, kill all the Muslims who think we are being anti-Islamic. And then kill everyone else who ends up hating us because of what we’ve done or who just hate us because of our freedom. Only then will the world be safe for democracy—at least for a few days.

OK, so Plan B is mostly just a rant. It won’t be my last.

Plan C. Keep doing what we’re doing. Keep doing what we’re doing. Keep doing what we’re doing. Keep doing what we’re doing. Keep doing what we’re doing. Keep doing what we’re doing. Keep….

Plan D. Stop being so gob-smacking stupid.

“They hate us for our freedom.” That has got to be the dumbest, lamest, baldest, most manipulative and strikingly concise piece of false propaganda I’ve ever heard. If you believe that, then you’ve been sold a pig in a poke.

Listen up: If you want to win, then you’d better know what drives your opponent, and this opponent doesn’t give a rat’s sass about our freedom.

But what they do hate is what they perceive as our political, cultural, corporate, economic and military influence, intimidation, interference and invasions in and of Islamic countries.

And how do we know this? Because those al-Qaeda terrorists, the criminals the Taliban allowed to shelter in Afghanistan, told us.

They told us not just in the controversial video tapes of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders, but even more clearly in their choice of targets over nearly ten years of attacks.

• 1992, Aden, Yemen; two hotels that were expected to be housing American troops; the troops bivouacked elsewhere.
• 1993, New York City; first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center.
• 1996, Manila, the Philippines; thwarted (at the last minute) attempt to assassinate then President Bill Clinton during his visit there.
• 1998, Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; simultaneous attacks on U.S. embassies.
• 2000, Aden, Yemen; attack on the guided missile destroyer USS Cole.
• 2001, New York City and Washington, D.C.; simultaneous attacks on the World Trade Center (second attempt), the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol (thwarted). 

For al-Qaeda, these were carefully chosen, symbolic targets. They exemplified our military, political and economic predominance throughout the world, especially in Islamic regions. And none of these targets symbolize freedom.

If someone wanted to attack symbols of our freedom, obvious choices are available, among others:

• the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor
• Independence Hall and the nearby Liberty Bell, part of Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia
• the Washington Monument, on the Mall in D.C.
• the National Archives Exhibition Hall in Washington, D.C., housing original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights
• “Old Ironsides,” the square-rigged frigate USS Constitution, in Boston Harbor
• the Bunker Hill Monument in Boston
• Fort McHenry National Monument near Baltimore, inspiration for our national anthem. 

No, al-Qaeda doesn’t hate our freedom. Their message is clear. As they see it, there is an entirely different set of problems having to do with oppressive and exploitive policies and actions on our part. That’s what has them miffed.

I do not pass judgment on the valdity of al-Qaeda’s complaints, but I vehemently condemn their acts of criminal terror. They have stooped to become what they denounce. Middle Eastern hypocrisy is just as disgusting as the western brand, no matter what name is used to call upon the Deity in justification.

However, I do have some questions: Why did many of our political leaders try to sell us a bill of goods about al-Qaeda’s motives? Were they too stupid to figure it out? Or did they just want to lead us around by the nose so they could pursue their own agendas? And did they think we’d be too stupid to figure that out?

Plan E. Give the President, Vice-President and each of our Senators and Representatives an M-4 carbine and a sack of grenades and send them to Afghanistan. Trust me, that war will be over before they touch down in Kabul. And we’ll have won.

Plan F. Starts with us looking in the mirror.