Robert Kuttner: Listening to Paul Volcker

Robert Kuttner: Listening to Paul Volcker: "

You know how far politics has swung to the right when the most left wing guy in the room is the former chairman of the Federal Reserve. But that's what financial reform has come to.

Paul Volcker was an early backer of Barack Obama. He counseled Obama on one of the best speeches of his campaign, his March 27, 2008 address on financial reform at Cooper Union, and sat in the front row as Obama delivered it. This was the speech where Obama declared that no corner of the financial system should be unregulated. And when Obama clinched the Democratic nomination, Volcker was introduced as a senior advisor.

But when it came time to allocate the jobs, the people with the real power managed to freeze out the grand old man of finance. Volcker, who had been touted as a possible treasury secretary, ended up chairing an advisory panel with little influence, the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and for the most part his phone doesn't ring. The board, appointed last year, did not even have its first meeting until May 20.

Yet Volcker has continued to speak out, and he is worth listening to, even if the White House is ignoring him. In his recent testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, Volcker made it clear that he had serious reservations about the recent administration and Federal Reserve policy of propping up financial institutions deemed 'too big to fail.' Volcker said that the actions amounted to an unintended and unanticipated extension of the official 'safety net,' an arrangement designed decades ago to protect the stability of the commercial banking system. The obvious danger is that with the passage of time, risk-taking will be encouraged and efforts at prudential restraint will be resisted. Ultimately, the possibility of further crises -- even greater crises -- will increase.

Volcker explicitly challenged the very centerpiece of the administration's proposed reform program, the idea of focusing on 'systemically significant institutions,' which presumably would come in for additional supervision, but would be rescued if they got into trouble. Volcker said:

The approach proposed by the Treasury is to designate in advance financial institutions 'whose size, leverage, and interconnection could pose a threat to financial stability if it failed.' Those institutions, bank or non-bank, connected to a commercial firm or not, would be subject to particularly strict and conservative prudential supervision and regulation. The Federal Reserve would be designated as consolidated supervisor. The precise criteria for designation as 'systemically important' have not, so far as I know, been set out. However, the clear implication of such designation, whether officially acknowledged or not, will be that such institutions, in whole or in part, will be sheltered by access to a Federal safety net in time of crisis; they will be broadly understood to be 'too big to fail.'

Think of the practical difficulties of such designation. Can we really anticipate which institutions will be systemically significant amid the uncertainties in future crises and the complex inter-relationships of markets? Was Long Term Capital Management, a hedge fund, systemically significant in 1998? Was Bear Stearns, but not Lehman? How about General Electric's huge financial affiliate, or the large affiliates of other substantial commercial firms? What about foreign institutions operating in the United States?

And, without using the words, Volcker in effect called for a restoration of the core principles of the Glass-Steagall Act, separating commercial banking from investment banking and proprietary trading. He said:

As a general matter, I would exclude from commercial banking institutions, which are potential beneficiaries of official (i.e., taxpayer) financial support, certain risky activities entirely suitable for our capital markets. Ownership or sponsorship of hedge funds and private equity funds should be among those prohibited activities. So should in my view a heavy volume of proprietary trading with its inherent risks.

Volcker made similar remarks in a speech in Los Angeles earlier this month. The point is that there is an entirely orthodox view of how to reform the financial system well to the left of the administration's. Similar criticisms have been made by progressives like Paul Krugman and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, as well as relative conservatives such as former World Bank chief economist Simon Johnson. But it doesn't get much more orthodox than Paul Volcker.

As Congress deliberates the details of financial reform, several of the key elements of the Obama program fall short -- the idea that 'systemic risk regulation' should just be bucked to the Federal Reserve; that immense financial conglomerates are perfectly fine as long as the Fed is keeping an eye on them -- the same Fed that totally missed the sub-prime disaster and that is owned by its member banks; the acceptance of the premise that customized derivative securities need not be traded on exchanges; the continuing toleration of the business models of behemoth financial conglomerates such as Goldman Sachs, which mix investment banking, hedge-fund speculation, proprietary trading for their own accounts, and commercial banking -- making them walking conflicts of interest.

Last week, there was a revealing skirmish on the House Financial Services Committee. The administration blueprint for reform, issued last June and currently being debated in several Congressional venues, includes a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). In the draft sent to Congress, the proposed Agency had the authority to require that in addition to marketing other, more complex and risky retail products, banks and other institutions would be required to offer 'plain vanilla' products. For example, a bank that marketed more lucrative and risky adjustable rate mortgages would also have to offer a traditional 30-year fixed rate mortgage. A similar 'plain vanilla' requirement has been part of New York State banking law for three decades.

But when the White House endorsed the idea, the banking lobby went berserk. It targeted members of the Financial Services Committee, offering campaign contributions to friendly legislators and threatening to support the opponents of pro-consumer members. On September 22, Chairman Barney Frank sent his colleagues a letter declaring that he would oppose any 'plain vanilla' language, adding that in his draft of the bill: 'Financial institutions will not be required to offer plain vanilla products and services and CFPA will not have the authority to approve or change business plans.'

Testifying the next day, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, never an enthusiast of the proposed consumer agency, said Frank's changes were fine with him. But of course, the whole point of consumer regulation is to require banks to 'change business plans' when those plans are built around insane products such as sub-prime loans or usurious credit cards. The bill is not even out of committee and the bankers' lobby is having its way.

If the American financial system needs anything, it needs a lot more plain vanilla -- fewer products of Byzantine complexity that serve no economic need other than the profit of their sponsors, less excessive risk, and more service by financial institutions to the real Main Street economy. We should be paying a lot more attention to plain vanilla type guys like Paul Volcker.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. His best-selling book is Obama's Challenge.

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(Via Huffington Blog.)

James Warren: This Week In Magazines: Obama The "Self-Entangling Giant"

James Warren: This Week In Magazines: Obama The "Self-Entangling Giant": "

The following is an excerpt from a HuffPost blog entry by James Warren about topics featured in magazines this week. Click here to read his entire post.

No matter how much he might disdain the George W. Bush presidency, especially when it comes to misuse of executive branch power, Barack Obama may be a 'self-entangling giant' who is going down the same perilous path argues no less an initial Obama sympathizer than journalist-historian Garry Wills in the Oct. 8 New York Review of Books.

Wills, a Northwestern University historian emeritus, argues in 'Entangled Giant' that Bush left office unpopular and disgraced, with Obama set on ending illegal acts like torture and indefinite detentions, denial and legal representation to detainees, and nullification of laws by signing statements, among others. But he then contends that, 'The momentum of accumulating powers in the executive is not easily reversed, checked or even slowed.'

Our entire post-World War 2 history 'caused an inertial transfer of power toward the executive branch,' replete with a de facto monopoly on nuclear power, a vast worldwide network of military bases, the systems of classification and clearance, the 'war on terror' and what Wills calls the 'cult of the commander in chief.' And while Obama has taken certain steps, like announcing the future closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, there are other actions and statements that give pause: the CIA asserting that it may retain the practice of sending prisoners to foreign nations; the Justice Department decision to abort a trial by invoking 'state secrets'; refusing to release photographs of 'enhanced interrogation'; the release of gay personnel from the U.S. military at rates equivalent to the Bush years; and what Wills deems Obama's defiance of the Constitution's 'full faith and credit' clause, mandating states to recognize laws passed by other states, via Obama's defense of the Defense of Marriage Act, allowing states to refuse to recognize other states' approval of gay marriages.

Most of his case involves national defense and he concedes, 'It should come as no surprise that turning around the huge secret empire built by the National Security State is a hard, perhaps impossible, task.' In sum, he argues that Obama will become a prisoner of the national security prison we've built over decades; an empire of military bases and imperial dealings largely unknown to the average citizen.

'He feels he must avoid embarrassing the hordes of agents, military personnel, and diplomatic instruments whose loyalty he must command,' writes Wills. 'Keeping up morale in this vast, shady enterprise is something impressed on him by all manner of commitments. He becomes the prisoner of his own power. As President Truman could not not use the bomb, a modern president cannot not use the huge powers at his disposal. It has all been given him as the legacy of Bomb Power, the thing that makes him not only Commander in Chief but Leader of the Free World. He is a self-entangling giant.'

"

(Via Huffington Blog.)

Bob Herbert: The Hard and Bitter Truth

Op-Ed Columnist: The Hard and Bitter Truth: "President Obama will face hard realities if he continues the war in Afghanistan."

(Via NYT > Opinion.)

Talk of Bipartisanship Is Now Thoroughly Warped

Talk of Bipartisanship Is Now Thoroughly Warped: "

By E.J. Dionne

All of the health bills on offer, even the supposedly ‘liberal’ House bill, are already centrist compromises built on a private health insurance market. Above, Olympia Snowe, who may turn out to be the single Senate Republican voting for reform.

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(Via Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines.)

Globalization Goes Bankrupt

Globalization Goes Bankrupt: "

By Chris Hedges

The rage of the disposed is fracturing the country, dividing it into camps that are unmoored from the political mainstream. Movements are building on the ends of the political spectrum that have lost faith in the mechanisms of democratic change. You can’t blame them. But unless we on the left move quickly, this rage will be captured by a virulent and racist right wing, one that seeks a disturbing proto-fascism.'

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(Via Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines.)

Working Class Zero - Timothy Egan Blog - NYTimes.com

Working Class Zero - Timothy Egan Blog - NYTimes.com: "For average Americans, the last 10 years were a lost decade. At the end of President George W. Bush’s eight years in office, American households had less money and less economic security, and fewer of them were covered by health care than 10 years earlier, the Census Bureau reported in its annual survey."

(Via .)

Baucus’ Budget Impact is “Voodoo Savings” Achieved by Taxing the Middle Class

Baucus’ Budget Impact is “Voodoo Savings” Achieved by Taxing the Middle Class: "One of the supposed advantages of the Baucus health proposal is its lower 'costs' compared to the rival House bills. But economist James Kwak at The Baseline Scenario calls this 'voodoo savings' achieved by taxing low- and middle-income Americans.

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(Via Firedoglake.)

Slouching Away from 9/11

Slouching Away from 9/11: "Insanity is loose in the land, and here we sit trying to counter the craziness by writing blogs."

(Via Firedoglake.)

A 9/11 Reality Check

A 9/11 Reality Check: "

By Robert Scheer

What if eight years ago the World Trade Center had been leveled by a small nuclear bomb that took out most of lower Manhattan as well? How many millions of innocent civilians would we have killed in retaliation? Would we still be a free society, or would Dick Cheney have attained the power of a demented king and destroyed the last vestiges of the rule of law?' '

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(Via Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines.)

How America Tortured - And No One Was Responsible

How America Tortured - And No One Was Responsible: "

Jane Mayer came across this chilling passage from Arendt:

These definitions coincide with the terms which, since Greek antiquity, have been used to define the forms of government as the rule of man over man—of one or the few in monarchy and oligarchy, of the best or the many in aristocracy and democracy, to which today we ought to add the latest and perhaps most formidable form of such dominion, bureaucracy, or the rule by an intricate system of bureaux in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few nor the many, can be held responsible, and which could be properly called the rule by Nobody. Indeed, if we identify tyranny as the government that is not held to give account of itself, rule by Nobody is clearly the most tyrannical of all, since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer for what is being done.

So many were tortured; but Nobody is responsible. Just keep walking...'

(Hat tip: Spencer.)

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(Via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.)

Mr. President, it's time to fight

Mr. President, it's time to fight: "No one's ever conquered Washington politics by saying 'pretty please' to the guys trying to cut your throat.

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(Via Salon.)

Nathan Schneider: Recession Is Dangerously Good for the Arms Business

Nathan Schneider: Recession Is Dangerously Good for the Arms Business: "

During World War II, government fiat turned thousands of peacetime manufacturers into arms producers for the war effort. Factories that once made cars and home appliances were retooled to turn out weapons. Now, in the present recession, market forces appear to be doing effectively the same thing, threatening to throw even more of the weight of American industry (such as it remains) into the war business.

Last April, NPR had a report about how auto parts suppliers are turning to other industries. As the U.S. car market dries up, and with the 'war on terror' going full steam ahead, the choice is easy for producers eager to maintain their profits and their workers. The reporter talked to Greg Rothermel, business development director of a supplier in Plymouth, Michigan:

Rothermel says the aerospace-defense industry has a big backlog of orders worth about $200 billion annually. TNT's business was about 25 percent aerospace-defense last year; he projects it will be up to 50 percent by next year. Revenues have grown from $10 million in 2003 to $12 million as of last year, since TNT began diversifying.

It's an offer more and more of these struggling outfits are unable to refuse. The car business is getting lost to foreign competition, but Pentagon policy ensures that it has to spend its billions at home. This amounts to a form of discretionary protectionism for a dangerous industry masquerading as patriotism.

Wouldn't it make more sense if, following President (and General) Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex, our policy were to limit the commitment of civilian industry to the military? The more wages (and executive bonuses) come to hinge on the war business, the more war will seem like reasonable economic policy, and the less reluctance business leaders will have to wage it.

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the problem is growing. According to a study by the Congressional Research Service, 'Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations,' the United States market-share in the international arms trade -- already the world's largest of course -- is growing considerably. Our military-industrial complex therefore stands to benefit not only from wars we ourselves wage, but also those of our client states. This is nothing new; U.S. industry has long profited from the conflicts of others. But, in today's desperate economic times, such practices can proudly display themselves as 'recession-proof' devices of recovery. And it certainly seems safer to depend on other people's wars than on our own.

These trends need to be taken for the threat to national and international stability that they are. In response, we must go out of our way to foster alternatives. This means sensibly considerable public investment in other necessary industries (and divestment from defense) to the point that they can compete with Pentagon contracts. The target industries should be pretty obvious, considering the crises that we presently face: health care, environmentally sustainable development, prison reform, social services, and international humanitarian aid. These are public responsibilities that have been tragically abandoned in the name of cutting spending, even while we continue to invest billions and billions into the future's bloodbaths.

Cross-posted at WagingNonviolence.org."

(Via Huffington Blog.)

Les Leopold: Happy Wall Street Day?

Les Leopold: Happy Wall Street Day?: "

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. -Abraham Lincoln

Believe it or not, we used to share Lincoln's belief in the value of labor. In fact, Labor Day began in 1882 to honor those 'who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.'

Oh have we ditched that commonsense notion! Today, we worship wealth while labor is just another 'input,' a way to maximize production and profit. We even have a theory of global 'comparative advantage,' which holds that we're better off if that 'input' is in some faraway nation where wages are low and we don't have to see the factories that are poisoning workers and the environment.

We have so devalued labor that we hardly notice when millions of people lose their jobs. If you take a close look at government reports, you'll see that 29,732,000 of our fellow Americans are unemployed and underemployed, giving us a real unemployment rate 18.55 percent.

But not to worry, we are told. Labor doesn't really matter anymore in the grand scheme of things. What matters is wealth, especially Wall Street wealth.

Lincoln thought labor created wealth. Now we think Wall Street creates value and wealth by moving money around, by buying and selling money instruments, and by passively investing accumulated wealth.

Take the Madoff scandal. Investors honestly believed they were entitled to double-digit returns every month, without fail, for doing absolutely nothing. They became easy prey to a swindler. All Madoff did was build on what he saw happening on Wall Street: Investors were flocking to fantasy finance instruments like synthetic CDOs that had almost no connection to any real assets. Madoff took it one step further: Instead of giving his gullible investors financial instruments that were almost worthless, he gave them nothing at all. And he got away with it because everyone wanted to believe in the magic of wealth creation.

We began building our sandcastles in the sky in the 1970s, when economists and policy-makers fell in love with the idea of deregulated markets. Organized labor was a constraint. Taxes on the wealthy were a constraint. Regulations on finance were a constraint. The answer was so simple: eliminate the constraints and unfetter the markets. This would bring new efficiency and new wealth to our economy. All boats would rise. Instead, it marked the end of labor as Lincoln knew it.

We weren't paying much attention as real wages for the average worker declined over the next three decades. We were too enthralled by our orgy of fantasy finance. So much money gushed to the top of the income ladder that the wealthy literally ran out of real world investments. Deregulated Wall Street 'financial engineers' solved this problem by creating new derivative financial products for people to invest in. Bubbles inflated everywhere. Tangible assets didn't matter anymore, since it turned out we could make money from money, indefinitely and without any serious real world constraints. (Forgive me again for leading you to The Looting of America, which recounts this whole outrageous story.)

Not only did our free-market fetish destabilize the economy, but it saddled us with an aristocracy of wealth and waste that now blocks us from solving our problems. The wealthy are determined to hold onto their fictional profit-making activities and astronomical salaries -- even if it means forcing the rest of us to bail them out again with trillions of dollars in subsidies and toxic asset guarantees. With wealth they can buy the political process. But they also can shape our minds. They want us to believe that they are the natural rulers of our universe and that we are powerless to change it.

Our free-market love-affair also broke the bonds that connected the top and the bottom of our society. The wealthy have no clue what it's like to live like most Americans do each day. A few statistics tell it all:

• In 1970 the ratio of compensation between the top 100 CEOs and the average worker was 45 to 1. By 2006 it was a whopping 1,723 to one.

• By 2007 there were about 400,000 tax payers with adjustable gross incomes over $1 million. They had about as much income as the bottom 67 million tax returns! That's the worst distribution of wealth since 1928 - no coincidence there.

• Today the top 400 billionaires have enough wealth (more than $1.56 trillion combined) to endow all of our public colleges and universities so that tuition would be free... forever.

Unfortunately, we seem to have learned very little since it all came tumbling down just about a year ago. We had a golden opportunity to slap taxes and fees on unproductive Wall Street speculation. We could have instituted real salary caps on an industry that we've bailed out from top to bottom. We could have shut down the fantasy finance casinos. All of this was possible because the financial sector had collapsed, right before our eyes -- along with the entire free market theory of finance. But what did we do instead? We lavished them with trillions of dollars in cash, no interest loans and asset guarantees...and got nearly nothing in return.

This Labor Day is a happy one for the super rich and Wall Street firms enjoying renewed profits and bonuses. They know they will not face a populist revolt. They can sit back and collect the money, while 30 million unemployed and underemployed people struggle to get by. They'll continue to get away with it as long as we believe that it's OK to get double-digit returns by gambling with taxpayer-secured money.

How long are we going to keep believing that someone like Andrew J. Hall, an oil speculator, is entitled to $100 million from a bank that is totally on the dole (our dole)? So much for the value of real labor in the real economy.

How long are we going to allow Wall Street to make up new casino games that not only are utterly and completely insane but also add nothing at all to society? (For the latest, see 'Wall Street Pursues Profits in Bundles of Life Insurance' -- about new securities that bet on us dying -- the sooner, the better.

But, I'm not ready yet to go from Labor Day to Wall Street Day. I fear that our economy will collapse again -- maybe soon -- if we don't find ways to employ our people productively. In fact, I'm fairly certain that no nation can survive for long if it fails to find sufficient work for its own. Maybe you'll make it to retirement without too much suffering. But there will be hell to pay for our kids if we don't tackle our obscene distribution of wealth.

So Happy Labor Day! Maybe this year we can gain a little of Lincoln's respect for the worth of his fellow citizens. It's a good time to take a moment to value our brothers and sisters who do all the things that need doing every day. And maybe we'll even begin to see that there's something wrong with accumulating wealth by doing nothing productive at all.... and believe once again that we can do something about it.

Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It, Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009. "

(Via Huffington Blog.)

It Could Be the End of Our Democracy as We Know It

It Could Be the End of Our Democracy as We Know It: "

By E.J. Dionne

Radical is too small a word to describe the extent to which the Supreme Court will turn our political system upside down if it decides to let corporations directly fund campaigns.

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(Via Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines.)

Bush's Third Term?

Bush's Third Term?: "

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

It sounds like the plot for the latest summer horror movie. Imagine, for a moment, that George W. Bush had been allowed a third term as president, had run and had won or stolen it, and that we were all now living (and dying) through it. With the Democrats in control of Congress but Bush still in the Oval Office, the media would certainly be talking endlessly about a mandate for bipartisanship and the importance of taking into account the concerns of Republicans. Can't you just picture it?

There's Dubya now, still rewriting laws via signing statements. Still creating and destroying laws with executive orders. And still violating laws at his whim. Imagine Bush continuing his policy of extraordinary rendition, sending prisoners off to other countries with grim interrogation reputations to be held and tortured. I can even picture him formalizing his policy of preventive detention, sprucing it up with some 'due process' even as he permanently removes habeas corpus from our culture.

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(Via MotherJones.com.)

Robert Scheer: Obama's Meaningless War

Robert Scheer: Obama's Meaningless War: "

True, he doesn't seem a bit like Lyndon Johnson, but the way he's headed on Afghanistan, Barack Obama is threatened with a quagmire that could bog down his presidency. LBJ also had a progressive agenda in mind, beginning with his war on poverty, but it was soon overwhelmed by the cost and divisiveness engendered by a meaningless, and seemingly endless, war in Vietnam.

Meaningless is the right term for the Afghanistan war, too, because our bloody attempt to conquer this foreign land has nothing to do with its stated purpose of enhancing our national security. Just as the government of Vietnam was never a puppet of Communist China or the Soviet Union, the Taliban is not a surrogate for al-Qaeda. Involved in both instances was an American intrusion into a civil war whose passions and parameters we never fully grasped and could not control militarily.

The Vietnamese Communists were not an extension of an inevitably hostile, unified international communist enemy, as evidenced by the fact that Communist Vietnam and Communist China are both our close trading partners today. Nor should the Taliban be considered simply an extension of a Mideast-based al-Qaeda movement, whose operatives the U.S. recruited in the first place to go to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.

Those recruits included Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attack, and financier Osama bin Laden, who met in Afghanistan as part of a force that Ronald Reagan glorified as 'freedom fighters.' As blowback from that bizarre, mismanaged CIA intervention, the Taliban came to power and formed a temporary alliance with the better-financed foreign Arab fighters still on the scene.

There is no serious evidence that the Taliban instigated the 9/11 attacks or even knew about them in advance. Taliban members were not agents of al-Qaeda; on the contrary, the only three governments that financed and diplomatically recognized the Taliban--Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan--all were targets of bin Laden's group.

To insist that the Taliban be vanquished militarily as a prerequisite for thwarting al-Qaeda is a denial of the international fluidity of that terrorist movement. Al-Qaeda, according to U.S. intelligence sources, has operated effectively in countries as disparate as Somalia, Indonesia, England and Pakistan, to name just a few. What is required to stymie such a movement is effective police and intelligence work, as opposed to deploying vast conventional military forces in the hope of finding, or creating, a conventional war to win. This last wan hope is what the effort in Afghanistan--in the last two months at its most costly point in terms of American deaths--is all about: marshaling massive firepower to fight shadows.

The Taliban is a traditional guerrilla force that can easily elude conventional armies. Once again the generals on the ground are insisting that a desperate situation can be turned around if only more troops are committed, as Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal did in a report leaked this week. Even with U.S. forces being increased to 68,000 as part of an 110,000-strong allied army, the general states, 'The situation in Afghanistan is serious. ...' In the same sentence he goes on to say 'but success is achievable.'

Fortunately, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is given to some somber doubts on this point, arguing that the size of the U.S. force breeds its own discontents: 'I have expressed some concerns in the past about the size of the American footprint, the size of the foreign military footprint in Afghanistan,' he said. 'And, clearly, I want to address those issues. And we will have to look at the availability of forces, we'll have to look at costs.'

I write the word fortunately because just such wisdom on the part of Robert McNamara, another defense secretary, during the buildup to Vietnam would have led him to oppose rather than abet what he ruefully admitted decades after the fact was a disastrous waste of life and treasure: 59,000 Americans dead, along with 3.4 million Indochinese, mostly innocent civilians. I was reporting from Vietnam when that buildup began, and then as now there was an optimism not supported by the facts on the ground. Then as now there were references to elections and supporting local politicians to win the hearts and minds of people we were bombing. Then as now the local leaders on our side turned out to be hopelessly corrupt, a condition easily exploited by those we term the enemy.

Those who favor an escalation of the Afghanistan war ought to own up to its likely costs. If 110,000 troops have failed, will we need the half million committed at one point to Vietnam, which had a far less intractable terrain? And can you have that increase in forces without reinstituting the draft?

It is time for Democrats to remember that it was their party that brought America its most disastrous overseas adventure and to act forthrightly to pull their chosen president back from the abyss before it is too late.

"

(Via Huffington Blog.)

World War II: 70 Years and We’re Still Fighting

World War II: 70 Years and We’re Still Fighting: "

On this day 70 years ago the Germans invaded Poland and so began what many consider the greatest conflict in human history. An estimated 60 million people would die, including 27 million Soviets and 12 million Jews, Gypsies, gays and other victims of the Nazi holocaust. Most of the dead were civilians.

The war radically altered the cultures of its participants and the map of the world. It created two superpowers that would fight over the ashes of Europe and the kingdoms of Asia for a generation.

World War II continues to captivate, though it has become a tragic pop culture caricature (with a few notable exceptions). The nightmares of infantry are now fodder for dozens of video games while Hollywood has made an art—and business—of flag-waving. Heroism and glory survive in our cultural memory better than fire bombings and ovens and the countless horrors of war. Perhaps that’s why we have had so many since.' —PS

Related: The BBC reports on Poland’s commemoration of the anniversary. Truthdig contributor and WWII veteran Gore Vidal on empire and history. Daniel Ellsberg reflects on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Chris Hedges writes on the horrors of war. Robert Scheer on the permanent war economy.

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(Via Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines.)