Blogger is at a rally in favor of American foreign policy, including regime change in Iraq (in Fall 2003).
Karen Loberg (Ventura Star) took the picture. It made the front page. He was famous for a day.
THE BLOG
of John Gelles
September 19, 2006
The President's Speeches (continued) --
Copy of Argument I made on Charlie Rose BoardsPeace for America and the World:
The Decisive Ideological Struggle of the 21st Century &
The War for the Middle EastI'm in a pissing match with a few anti-Bushites in the Charlie Rose Board. The bright side is that I may find the Euston Manifesto is not washed up --- yet I fear it is. More about it later in the week,
Innerout [that's his ID name] said he was interested in the President's speech on 9-11 -- presumably he will also pay attention to today's UN speech on the same matters.
But Innerout did not agree to include the economic and fairness issues I insisted were inseparable from American policy.
They are inseparable: Shinseki wanted to do the whole job required -- when policy demanded regime change in Iraq -- (as Congress and Clinton had year's before agreed). Rumsfeld, Bush and Chaney wanted to do half the job "on the cheap" BECAUSE they thought we had not the money to fully police Iraq and fully rebuild it too. The same holds for Afghanistan (and for the destructive paths of Katrina and Rita -- as far as they go -- in the real history that followed 9-11).
Only Lerner-Keynes theory of cash-flow, full financing, of all we can produce -- AFTER essential spending, which is what I insist must be added to preventive war theory,-- can do the job undertaken when you go to war.
So Innerout, you may not like what I demand as common sense -- but you are dead wrong in the matter: no need for me to play by short-sighted rules.
Add -- to the cash spending, anti-inflation taxes only, and high-tech war fighting we owed our troops and nation, -- the economic fairness doctrine you dismiss as irrelevant, and implementation of the FDR's Second Bill of Rights, and you have my full polite argument.
Now the Euston Manifesto also demands all the above -- else it also fails to move from "demands to be done on the cheap" to "plans that stand a chance to succeed."
The President today at the UN will again stress the goals of FDR -- to prevent totalitarian murderers from winning --, murderers who are descendants of fascist ideologues from the 1930's.
But, again, the President will not put the money and mobilization necessary to do the job, where his mouth will be. His policies will right. His financial, personnel and weapons programs, will fall far short of what we need.
Still, the know-nothings who have posted here, and the anti-Bush left of which they are a part, will offer Americans nothing but corruption in the UN and capitulation in the Persian Gulf.
With any luck, Republicans will hold on to both houses, and the President may come around to see that tax cuts alone are no substitute for full mobilization -- if he intends to leave office with America protected from immoderate Islamic nuclear weapons ambitions and irresponsible global economic forces destroying our middle class and planet.
Hate Bush all you want. Your Chamberlainism and anti-Americanism will serve only to endanger your own life and freedom.
Get on board the common sense aspects of the Euston Manifesto and add to it enough reform to pay for its ambitious humanitarian goals, and you may yet become heirs to FDR's and Churchill's efforts -- not Hitler's and Stalin's.
Still, not even Churchill backed the Second Bill of Rights -- where FDR predicted all the war we see for lack of their enactment.
Some of you may want things like unemployment, poverty, and slavish adherence to laissez faire -- because paid for solutions to our needs seem Utopian. Others want only Chomskyesque irrational revenge against universal imperfection.
Better people than you want to see America (and all who would move here were it possible) succeed -- and our Revolution to continue.
John Gelles
http://revolutionary-reform.wikispaces.com
