MATTHEWGOODONLINE

I adore the term acceptable dictator. Every time I hear it, or the term friendly dictator, it’s as if the voice of Henry Kissinger is saying it in my head – who knows a thing or two about friendly dictators. Then again, the fact that that happens is somewhat creepy.

But I’m jumping the gun. First, a little back story…

Though little known, or reported, Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai, after his falling out with the Taliban, spent much of his energies on the reinstatement of Zahir Shah while in self imposed exile in Pakistan. This, of course, is the very same man that was later singled out to become the legitimate face of ‘Afghan democracy’ – which should be rather telling regarding Karzai’s personal ambitions given the fact that he went from promoting the return of a Monarch to the West’s champion of democratic freedom almost overnight.

Since becoming the President of Afghanistan, Karzai has been labeled the Mayor of Kabul, primarily because the influence of his government extends little further than its outskirts without the existence of foreign occupational forces which, in truth, ensure the continued existence of Afghanistan’s fledgling shake-and-bake democracy.

But with Karzai has come the reality that the West could do better, that a far more pliable leader would be more advantageous to Western objectives – even if that leader were not a democratic one, an assertion recently made by Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador. From Elaine Sciolino in today’s New York Times…

“A coded French diplomatic cable leaked to a French newspaper quotes the British ambassador in Afghanistan as predicting that the NATO-led military campaign against the Taliban will fail. That was not all. The best solution for the country, the ambassador said, would be installing an “acceptable dictator,” according to the newspaper.

“The current situation is bad, the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption, and the government has lost all trust,” the British envoy, Sherard Cowper-Coles, was quoted as saying by the author of the cable, François Fitou, the French deputy ambassador to Kabul.

The two-page cable — which was sent to the Élysée Palace and the French Foreign Ministry on Sept. 2, and was leaked to the investigative and satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné, which printed excerpts in its Wednesday issue — said that the NATO-led military presence was making it harder to stabilize the country.

“The presence of the coalition, in particular its military presence, is part of the problem, not part of its solution,” Sir Sherard was quoted as saying. “Foreign forces are the lifeline of a regime that would rapidly collapse without them. As such, they slow down and complicate a possible emergence from the crisis.”

Within 5 to 10 years, the only “realistic” way to unite Afghanistan would be for it to be “governed by an acceptable dictator,” the cable said, adding, “We should think of preparing our public opinion” for such an outcome.”

There’s Kissinger’s voice in my head again.

From the BBC…

“The lower house of the US Congress has voted down a $700bn (£380bn) plan aimed at bailing out Wall Street.

The rescue plan, a result of tense talks between the government and lawmakers, was rejected by 228 to 205 votes in the House of Representatives.

About two-thirds of Republican lawmakers refused to back the rescue package, as well as 95 Democrats.

Shares on Wall Street plunged within seconds of the announcement, after earlier falls on global markets.

A White House spokesman said that President George W Bush was “very disappointed” by the result.

He would meet members of his team in the coming days to “determine next steps”, spokesman Tony Fratto said.

The vote followed a day of turmoil in the financial sector.”

[…]

“So grave are the consequences of this decision, reports the BBC’s Kevin Connolly from Washington, that the speaker of the house paused for several long minutes after the vote was taken before declaring it official.
The no vote plunged the world of Washington politics into turmoil and the markets into deep and instant chaos with rapid falls on Wall Street, our correspondent says.”

A comment left by a reader from Baltimore summed it up…

“I am glad the bailout bill failed. I work five days a week, save cash and pay my bills. I did not want to pay for Corporate America’s greed”.

Global Impact

» Wachovia, the fourth-largest US bank, was bought by larger rival Citigroup in a rescue deal backed by US authorities.

» Benelux banking giant Fortis was partially nationalised by the Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg governments to ensure its survival.

» The UK government announced it was nationalising the Bradford & Bingley bank.

» Global shares fell sharply - France’s key index lost 5%, Germany’s main market dropped 4% while US shares plunged after the vote result was announced.

Update

I’m not one to happily use Lou Dobbs to demonstrate a point, but in this instance it’s pretty relevant (tip: satchboogieca)….

As Congress votes on the proposed bailout plan, the Dow Jones has fallen 600 points today, with oil dropping below $100 dollars a barrel. But rather than opine on the domestic causes for the crisis, I want to direct some attention to an article recently written by Chalmers Johnson entitled We Have the Money - If Only We Didn’t Waste It on the Defense Budget that delves into a little discussed aspect of the current crisis…

“There has been much moaning, air-sucking, and outrage about the $700 billion that the U.S. government is thinking of throwing away on rich New York bankers who have been ripping us off for the past few years and then letting greed drive their businesses into a variety of ditches. In fact, we dole out similar amounts of money every year in the form of payoffs to the armed services, the military-industrial complex, and powerful senators and representatives allied with the Pentagon.

On Wednesday, September 24th, right in the middle of the fight over billions of taxpayer dollars slated to bail out Wall Street, the House of Representatives passed a $612 billion defense authorization bill for 2009 without a murmur of public protest or any meaningful press comment at all. (The New York Times gave the matter only three short paragraphs buried in a story about another appropriations measure.)

The defense bill includes $68.6 billion to pursue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is only a down-payment on the full yearly cost of these wars. (The rest will be raised through future supplementary bills.) It also included a 3.9% pay raise for military personnel, and $5 billion in pork-barrel projects not even requested by the administration or the secretary of defense. It also fully funds the Pentagon’s request for a radar site in the Czech Republic, a hare-brained scheme sure to infuriate the Russians just as much as a Russian missile base in Cuba once infuriated us. The whole bill passed by a vote of 392-39 and will fly through the Senate, where a similar bill has already been approved. And no one will even think to mention it in the same breath with the discussion of bailout funds for dying investment banks and the like.”

This is an aspect of the financial crisis that I am astonished has not been given any attention – that and the foreign debt of the United States. In the recent Presidential debate, John McCain claimed that the United States owes China half a trillion dollars. In truth, the United States owes China a trillion dollars. The US foreign debt is so incredibly severe that one third of it is equal to the entire debt of the Third World. Everyone’s got a credit card though, and everyone’s encouraged to spend rather than save. After 9/11 the best advice that the White House could give the country was to go shopping.

And then the nation went to war, and every year that it has been at war the annual defense budget has increased - and yet defense spending has had almost no impact on the domestic economic mindset. Despite the fact that the nation was spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year, the promotion of the good life remained a steadfast domestic reality.

Despite what is occurring on Wall Street, the military expenditures of the United States remain phenomenally enormous. The US defense budget is, if you can believe it, some $200 billion dollars more than that of the entire European Union, and almost $6 billion dollars more than China’s and Russia’s. By comparison, the Canadian defense budget couldn’t buy toilet paper for troops in Iraq.

From Tom Engelhardt…

“Estimates of the true long-term costs of the President’s war of choice, including payments of health care and veterans benefits into the distant future, soar into the budgetary stratosphere. They range from the Congressional Budget Office’s $1-2 trillion to an estimate by economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes of up to $4-5 trillion. So we’re talking somewhere between one-and-a-half and seven bailouts-worth of taxpayer dollars flowing into the morass of disaster, corruption, and carnage in Iraq.”

Of course, none of this excuses the behaviour of those untouchable picaroons that played their role in engineering this current crisis. As the New York Times points out this morning, they’re already looking for ways to capitalize on the disastrous product of their own greed…

“Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.

Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.

At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.

Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury’s proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions.”

There’s only one word for it, and I wish it were more eloquent, but clusterfuck is it.

The US Presidential race has been hijacked by the financial crisis, there’s no questioning that. John McCain wants to delay the upcoming Presidential debate because of it and Obama doesn’t. How their disagreement will play out in the minds of voters is anyone’s guess. There is no doubt that the American public has been so consumed by fear over the last week and a half that delaying a Presidential debate might seem acceptable to many. If it does occur, Wall Street will have succeeded in screwing over the American public twofold – once financially and once democratically.

The focus on the financial crisis has also helping to limit the damage caused by the McClain campaign’s latest blunder…

“Sarah Palin met her first world leaders Tuesday. It was a tightly controlled crash course on foreign policy for the Republican vice presidential candidate, the mayor-turned-governor who has been outside North America just once.”

[…]

“Before Palin’s first meeting of the day, with Karzai, campaign aides had told reporters in the press pool that followed her they could not go into meetings where photographers and a video camera crew would be let in for pictures.

Bush and members of Congress routinely allow reporters to attend photo opportunities along with photographers, and the reporters sometimes are able to ask questions at the beginning of private meetings before they are ushered out.

At least two news organizations, including AP, objected to the exclusion of reporters and were told that the decision to have a “photo spray” only was not subject to discussion.”

No questions – that’s understandable being that I probably own t-shirts that have a better understanding of the current geopolitical landscape than she does (not to mention ones that are more well traveled) - and she’s running to be the Vice President of the United States.

But that’s of little concern. She’s got a whole month to be coached by some of the best Republican foreign policy minds out there - and look at what a terrific job they’ve done over the last seven and a half years.

It’s happened twice in recent days – two US incursions into the Pakistani Province of Waziristan, both denied by the United States. The first involved two US helicopters that were, according to Pakistani sources, fired upon, and which returned to Afghan airspace without returning fire. The second incident involved a US drone that reportedly crashed in Southern Waziristan yesterday according to the Pakistani media.

Despite the recent attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the Pakistani government’s position regarding the sanctity of its sovereignty remains unaltered – Pakistani forces will use force to repel operations by foreign militaries emanating from Afghanistan. While the attentions of many in the United States, and elsewhere, are focused on the current economic crisis, the potentially catastrophic game that is being played by the Bush Administration has been flying under the radar.

As Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer, pointed out in a recently article for Time…

“As Wall Street collapsed with a bang, almost no one noticed that we’re on the brink of war with Pakistan. And, unfortunately, that’s not too much of an exaggeration. On Tuesday, the Pakistan’s military ordered its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American military incursions into Pakistan. The story has been subsequently downplayed, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, flew to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, to try to ease tensions. But the fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani sovereignty.

You have to wonder whether the Bush administration understands what it is getting into. In case anyone has forgotten, Pakistan has a hundred plus nuclear weapons. It’s a country on the edge of civil war. Its political leadership is bitterly divided. In other words, it’s the perfect recipe for a catastrophe.”

[…]

“U.S. forces have been entering Pakistan for the last six years. But it was always very quietly, usually no more than a hundred yards in, and usually to meet a friendly tribal chieftain. Pakistan knew about these crossings, but it turned a blind eye because it was never splashed across the front page of the country’s newspapers. This has all changed in the last month, as the Administration stepped up Predator missile attacks. And then, after the New York Times ran an article that U.S. forces were officially given the go-ahead to enter Pakistan without prior Pakistani permission, Pakistan had no choice but to react.

On another level the Bush Administration’s decision to step up attacks in Pakistan is fatally reckless, because the cross-border operations’ chances of capturing or killing al Qaeda’s leadership are slim. American intelligence isn’t good enough for precision raids like this. Pakistan’s tribal regions are a black hole that even Pakistani operatives can’t enter and come back alive. Overhead surveillance and intercepts do little good in tracking down people in a backward, rural part of the world like this.

On top of it, is al-Qaeda worth the candle? Yes, some deadender in New York or London could blow himself up in the subway and leave behind a video claiming the attack in the name of al-Qaeda. But our going into Pakistan, risking a full-fledged war with a nuclear power, isn’t going to stop him.”

What has shocked me more than anything is the fact that reports of a three-phase plan, approved at the highest level of government, have gone completely overlooked. According to an article published by NPR on the 13th of this month, President Bush himself gave the green light to the plan, which includes the use of Predator Drones and US Special Operations Forces to strike targets within Pakistan. One of the first actions taken under this new strategy was a raid by US Navy Seals in which civilians were killed. Further, it has been reported that CIA personnel from various parts of the world are being deployed along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier in an attempt to produce an ‘intelligence surge’ to aid in the selection of cross-border targets.

In the end, the reality, as Baer pointed out, is that the United States is willfully ignoring the sovereignty of Pakistan. Given that, it is empowering both the Pakistani military and local militants to support an aligned cause – the repulsion of foreign military incursions.

Given that President Bush has mere months left in office, the risk of sparking something disastrous is only bolstered by his administration’s repeatedly proven track record of outright stupidity. And while the condemnation of Iran continues to attract more international attention, the fact that the United States is goading a nuclear power is certainly something that should not be excused as Republican political necessity with regards to making an 11th hour attempt to kill or capture high level al-Qaeda figures to feebly justify the administration’s mistakes.

I’m going to do my damndest to sleep in tomorrow morning, so I thought I would post a few articles of interest for those of you in other time zones that will be up well ahead of me.

First, an article by the Boston Globe’s Joan Vennochi which includes an opening that could have been penned by Bruce Springsteen…

“When you are too big to fail, you are bailed out.

When you are too small to save, you are down and out on the street.”

The second article, entitled Why does the US think it can win in Afghanistan?, is by The Independent’s Robert Fisk. Fisk is easily one of the most educated journalists in the world when it comes to Middle Eastern affairs, having been The Independent’s foreign correspondent in that region (based in Lebanon) for more than 30 years. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend his masterpiece - The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

Nighty-night.

Editor And Publisher reported yesterday that charges will be dropped against journalists recently arrested at the Republican National Convention.

The mayor of St. Paul, Chris Coleman, had the following to say regarding the decision…

“This decision reflects the values we have in St. Paul to protect and promote our First Amendment rights to freedom of the press. At the scene, the police did their duty in protecting public safety. In this decision, we are serving the public’s interest to maintain the integrity of our democracy, system of justice and freedom of the press.”

Flat out - either I’m on Crystal Meth or Chris Coleman is. What sort of moron claims that arresting and charging journalists was done to ‘protect public safety’? Unless, that is, they happen to be representatives of foreign interests that are using their position to cause unrest.

There’s no doubt that the arrests have become an embarrassment, but I personally don’t think that it should be overlooked that directives most likely came down from ‘on high’ with regards to procedure. And now, in the wake of it all, Coleman has the audacity to claim that the charges are being dropped to protect the sanctity of the First Amendment.

What happened in St. Paul was unabashedly autocratic. The only place that the First Amendment was allowed to be exercised was inside the Xcel Center, where the country’s major media giants were, for the most part, helping to contribute to the further diminishment of the Fourth Estate’s integrity.

Prior to learning that two of her colleagues were in dire straits outside of the Xcel Center, Amy Goodman was constitutionally as safe as houses. Until, that is, she decided to leave the convention floor, go outside, and attempt to find out what was going on. After that her First Amendment rights were as useful as used toilet paper.

The integrity of democracy? Given what occurred, that’s rich coming from anyone in a nation that’s spent the last seven years supposedly delivering democracy’s ‘advantages’ by way of Hellfire missiles.

Forty people have been killed, and some one hundred wounded, after a truck exploded in front of the Marriott Hotel in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. The power of the blast was significant, producing a 20ft crater and destroying the front of the hotel, the remaining section of which authorities fear could collapse. The significance of the Marriott as a target should not be overlooked. It is the most prestigious hotel in the capital and regularly frequently by foreigners.

Given what is occurring along the Waziristan frontier with regards to cross-border US military operations, the bombing of the Marriott could very well constitute blowback. Of course, many don’t like events of this nature being framed as such. It’s much easier to view them simply as the acts of madmen – and of course there is truth to that. But the timing, given the mounting tensions between the Pakistani military and the United States, should not be discounted.

Though we will probably never know, one has to wonder who was in the hotel at the time that may have represented a target.

As the folks over at Crooks And Liars have been pointing out, Chris Matthews, like him or dislike him, has been rightly admonishing Republicans supporting Mr. McCain for distancing themselves from the responsibilities of the current administration, and the Republican party itself, regarding the current economic crisis. In a recent interview with Congressman Eric Cantor, Matthews said…

“The way we keep score in American politics is the party that’s in power for eight years and runs the White House — and 3/4 of the time runs the Congress and the White House — takes the heat when things go bad. Congressman Cantor, you’re trying to change the rules now and saying, ‘oh, if we take off our uniforms and don’t say we’re Republicans this week, the people will be fooled.’ I’ve never heard of that happening in politics.”

Matthews did the same thing in another recent interview with McCain Senior Policy Advisor Nancy Pfotenhauer…

“Matthews: But I don’t understand - John McCain is the nominee of the Republican Party.

Pfotenhauer: Yes.

Matthews: He’s going to stand in that debate next Friday night on the 26th, because he is the nominee of the Republican Party. That’s why he has a 50/50 chance of winning this election. Because he is the nominee of the Republican Party and the other guy is the nominee-Barack Obama-of the Democratic Party. How can you run away from the party whose platform you’re running on? I don’t understand how you can deny that you’re the in party, you’re the incumbent party.”

This is a fantastic piece that I highly recommend watching…