I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).
This week: The Los Angeles Mayor’s race saw record-high campaign spending and low turnout for a job that’s not all that powerful.
SYNDICATED COLUMN: The Real Reason to Impeach Obama
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Why Is the FBI Helping a Monstrous Dictator?
Forget the IRS, AP and Benghazi. The real scandal this week — the corrupt politicization of the nation’s top law enforcement agency — is President Obama’s decision to carry water for one of the world’s most evil dictators.
In a little-noticed move, Obama’s FBI has arrested Fazliddin Kurbanov, a 30-year-old Uzbekistani political dissident who, were this 1983, would be dubbed a “freedom fighter.”
Kurbanov faces the generic catchall charges used since 9/11 by the feds against low-level Islamists: conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization — in this case, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) — and conspiracy to provide material support to (individual) terrorists. As usual, the “material support” charge doesn’t amount to much: the indictment alleges that he researched and made videos about how to make IEDs to use in Uzbekistan.
Major plot point: Kurbanov’s “terror plot” did not target the United States.
Nearly as important: the IMU is not at war with the U.S.
Originally based in rural Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan, the IMU’s goal is to overthrow Uzbekistani President Islam Karimov, the most brutal of the dictators that have run the Central Asian republics since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Karimov’s regime brooks no dissent: torture and murder of political opponents (and of businesspeople who refuse to pay bribes) is widespread. Officialdom is breathtakingly corrupt, sucking the oil- and gas-rich republic dry. Universally feared and reviled, Karimov is best known for boiling dissidents such as Mazafar Avazov and Khuzniddin Alimov to death (details and a gruesome photo of the 2002 boilings can be found in my book “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?“), and for personally orchestrating the 2005 Andijon Massacre, in which at least 400 civilians were slaughtered by Uzbek security forces.
After Andijon, even the ethics-deficient Bush Administration decided that enough was enough, pulling U.S. forces out of Kashi-Khanabad airbase, which it had leased since 2001, and slashing military aid.
Which did nothing to rein in the tyrant. “The Uzbek constitution imposes a two-term limit, but Karimov was elected to a third term…His government engages in routine torture of citizens and has subjected dissenters to forced psychiatric treatment,” reports Parade magazine. All three of Karimov’s “opponents” in the 2007 election campaigned on his behalf.
Even by the cynical standards of international realpolitik, Karimov is radioactive — the kind of over-the-top despot Americans normally consider targets of “regime change” or at least trade sanctions. No civilized country should maintain diplomatic relations with Karimov, a tyrant whose abuses equal or exceed those of Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi.
“Radioactive” is an unfortunate choice of words, since Uzbekistan’s uranium mines (along with vast reserves of Caspian Sea natural gas, oil, and a pipeline and refinery network strategically linked to its petroleum-rich neighbors Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) is part of the reason the United States is sucking up to him.
Rather than targeting Karimov with drones or cruise missiles, Obama has the butcher of Andijon on speed dial, reaching out in 2011 to ask the Uzbek leader for permission to ship war materiel through his benighted country into U.S.-occupied Afghanistan. In 2012, despite a Human Rights Watch report that found that life under Karimov had gotten worse since Andijon, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Obama agreed to restore Karimov’s billion-dollar aid package.
Even in this economy, it seems, a billion bucks only goes so far. To further ingratiate the U.S. to Karimov, the White House has targeted the IMU. Bear in mind, the IMU has never attacked the U.S. Even though a U.S. airstrike killed an IMU founders in 2001, the group has never declared its intent to attack the U.S. Its beef is with Islam Karimov; its goal is to establish an Islamist state in Uzbekistan.
The IMU’s misfortune has been to fall on the wrong side of the “enemy of our friend is our enemy” equation. We’re in bed with Karimov and his fellow Central Asian dictators. Our icky prisoner-boiling pals hate the IMU.
No doubt, the IMU is a violent insurgent group. During one of its periodic summer offenses, the IMU kidnapped four American mountain climbers in early 2000 — an offense that prompted Bush to declare the group a State Department-designated terrorist organization. But the fact that the climbers were American appears to have been unrelated to their capture. IMU offensives also swept up Tajik and Kyrgyz civilians and soldiers, and four Japanese geologists. (Kyrgyz security forces claim to have disrupted a 2003 IMU plot to blow up the U.S. embassy in Bishkek, but such claims, often ploys to attract U.S. foreign aid, should be met with skepticism.)
Like many radical Muslim groups in Asia, some members of the IMU — a small cadre of fighters estimated to number between 300 and 500 men — trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan during Taliban rule. After the 2001 U.S. invasion they fled across the border into Pakistan’s Tribal Areas, where they established alliances with and fought alongside various Pashtun Islamist groups. IMU fighters have clashed with U.S. occupation forces in Waziristan and Afghanistan. But the IMU has shown no sign of bringing the fight to the U.S. IMU ideology is local and regional, limited to spreading Sharia-based governments first and foremost in Uzbekistan, and in countries like Pakistan if possible. No one — not even the FBI — alleges that the IMU plans to attack the U.S.
The U.S. government is at war with radical Islam. The question for Americans is: In a conflict between a monstrous dictator and a small group of would-be revolutionaries trying to overthrow him, should we take sides — especially the side of the dictator?
(Ted Rall’s website is tedrall.com. His book “After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back As Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan” will be released in November by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.)
COPYRIGHT 2013 TED RALL
LOS ANGELES TIMES CARTOON: Anti-Swatting Bill
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I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).
This week: The State Senate has approved an anti-“swatting” bill. “Swatting” is the act of pranksters who make false 911 calls in the hope of prompting a heavily-armed police response, typically to the home of a celebrity.
Exclusive: Cagle Sued by Top Executive
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Daryl Cagle and Cagle Cartoons are being sued under the Fair Labor Standards Act by a top (one assumes former) executive, Cari Dawson Bartley. Dawson is/was Cagle’s Executive Editor/Marketing Director.
According to a source, Dawson Bartley has worked for Cagle for 12 years.
More on this breaking story as it becomes available.
SYNDICATED COLUMN: Investigating the Investigators
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IRS Targeting is a Scandal, CIA Targeting is Business as Usual
“We’re fighting for you!” That’s what the Democratic Party tells Democratic voters and what the Republican Party tells Republicans. But even their “battles” reveal how similar the two parties really are.
Case study: what gets investigated.
Less than a week after the news broke that the IRS engaged in ideological profiling in 2011 and 2012 — targeting Tea Party-related non-profits for checks into whether they were violating the terms of their tax-exempt status by spending donor money on political ads — top Democrats joined their GOP counterparts to demand a Congressional investigation. That’s lightening quick for government work — and yet not fast for some. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida, ’16 prez prospect) called for Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller to resign immediately. President Obama called the IRS’ actions “outrageous” and “contrary to our traditions.” The IRS has already apologized.
This all goes to show that the federal government can turn on a dime when it wants to do something. It’s a matter of priorities. Millions of Americans whose homes were stolen by banks in illegal foreclosures waited five years for $600 settlement checks that bounced; the Fed gave the executives of those banks $7.77 trillion in a matter of days, no questions asked.
So it goes with what gets investigated.
Thrown under the bus in a matter of days, the IRS is already getting ground to mincemeat. Meanwhile, a spectacular panorama of Bush-era abuses have yet to draw the attention of a single Congressional subcommittee.
The 2000 stolen presidential election fiasco? Still no investigation — even though retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the swing vote in the 5-4 decision in Bush v. Gore, now agrees with constitutional lawyers who say the high court had no jurisdiction in the case and thus shouldn’t have heard it.
There still hasn’t been an independent investigation of 9/11.
No one has ever been questioned, much less held accountable, for the invasion of Afghanistan (ostensibly to catch Osama bin Laden, though he was already in Pakistan), the installation by the U.S. of the unpopular Hamid Karzai as a U.S. puppet, huge cash bribes paid to Karzai by Bush and now Obama, or the lies — an impeachable offense — about Saddam’s WMDs used to con the public into war against Iraq.
People outraged by Bush’s torture program, secret prisons, extraordinary rendition and indefinite detention of innocent people, including children, at post-9/11 gulags at places like Guantánamo, the “salt pit” at Bagram and the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia — even on prison ships on the high seas — hoped that President Obama would make good on his campaign promises to investigate these horrific crimes against international law, U.S. law and common decency. Instead, he obstructed justice — another impeachable offense — issuing a directive to his Justice Department and other law enforcement agencies to ignore them. “We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” he told a TV interviewer on January 12, 2009, eight days before taking office.
“At the CIA, you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe,” he said. “I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got spend their all their time looking over their shoulders.”
Yes. God forbid our heroic torturers should face any questions about jamming forced enemas up prisoners’ butts. Sorry: I meant our extraordinarily talented torturers.
And, now a flashback to April 14, 2008 — a mere nine months earlier. Candidate Obama told The Philadelphia Inquirer: “If I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in cover-ups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law.”
Except the CIA. And the military. And Donald Rumsfeld and Condi Rice and Dick Cheney and John Yoo and, of course, George W. Bush, who explicitly authorized the torture and other high crimes, and is now an elder statesman with his own library and everything.
To recap:
Both parties think it’s bad bad bad for the IRS to target right-wing pseudo-nonprofits for audits.
Both parties think it’s perfectly fine A-OK doubleplusgood to target the buttholes of random Muslims you kidnapped from Afghanistan or Yemen or wherever.
What the IRS did was, of course, wrong. But I’d rather be audited than butt-raped. Butt-raping, especially butt-raping that occurs before illegal auditing, should be investigating before illegal auditing.
Both parties also agree that if there’s ever been something that doesn’t need investigating by anyone, ever, it’s drones. Yes, a whopping 1.8% of Congress recently held an “unofficial hearing” (toothless PR stunt) and politely requested that Obama provide “further clarification of the legal justifications behind drone strikes.”
But no one —not even Vermont’s token “socialist” Bernie Sanders — has called for an investigation into a drone war that ridiculously remains “classified,” a secret to everyone but the dead, the maimed and their survivors. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky, ’16 prez prospect)’s filibuster merely demanded whether Obama planned to drone any U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. (Since he has already droned U.S. citizens on foreign soil, we know the answer to that.)
I’m not Suze Orman, but please let me help you save a few bucks. Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, the next time you get a campaign mailer asking you to support them because they’re “fighting hard for you,” chuck that sucker into the recycler. The truth is, the two major parties are on the same page on just about everything.
They’re not fighting for you.
They’re fighting for themselves.
(Ted Rall’s website is tedrall.com. His book “After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back As Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan” will be released in November by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.)
COPYRIGHT 2013 TED RALL
Stephen Hawking gets Hasbara’ed
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Stephen Hawking’s much vaunted presence at a scientific conference in Israel, hosted by Shimon Peres, would have added much needed sheen to the rogue state’s tarnished image. The esteemed physicist’s keynote address to his colleagues, and in particular, his host nation, would have branded Israel in the eyes of the world as a regional epicenter for cultural and intellectual pursuits, and bestowed it with the legitimacy it lacks as an international lawbreaker, operating the world’s largest open air prison. If the brainiest guy in the world saw fit to ignore a boycott, who was Elvis Costello, Stevie Wonder, Julianne Moore, Emma Thompson, Viggo Mortenson, Salma Hayek etc to take a moral stand against ‘The Only Democracy in the Middle East’? Who needs a bunch of “uppity has been” celebrities, when you’ve got Stephen Hawkings (and Justin Bieber!) on your side? “I’ll raise you one Gaga for your Tutu. Take that, H8terz”, seems to be Israel’s official response to growing international condemnation for its apartheid regime. It’s one thing to lose Lollapalooza, quite another to be publicly stood up by the most eminent intellectual on the planet. Perhaps confirmed attendees Barbra Streisand and Prince Albert of Monaco will step up to the vacant podium and share their thoughts on quantum physics.
Organizers of the now lackluster event were ecstatic to have someone of Hawking’s calibre to bolster a state-sponsored Science Fair, falling all over themselves to praise the renowned physicist. “Look at what we bagged”, these Hasbara trophy hunters were bragging just hours before Professor Hawkings cancelled his scheduled appearance at the conference, citing his conscience as the reason for bowing out.
“I accepted the invitation to the Presidential Conference with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a peace settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank. However, I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster.”
And suddenly the soon-to-be fawned-over celebrity became a pariah within the pariah state when Israeli spin doctors were unable to excise politics from Professor Hawking’s statement – even going as far as releasing a statement on his behalf, citing non-existent “health concerns” as a reason for his very public no-show. Israeli bloggers and commenters, no longer restrained by state-sanctioned civility towards useful idiots (oops, I mean “visiting scholars”) in order to conceal the real face of their brutal military occupation of Palestinian land, gave themselves free rein to rage against Professor Hawkings and even the machines that keep him alive. Israel’s fearsome warriors trained in the deadly art of typo-riddled message board missives suddenly saw fit to mock his disability and his appearance, calling his intellect into question, while denouncing him as . . . wait for it . . . “anti-Semitic”.
Israel’s butt-hurt response to people who point out its failures is reminiscent of those guys who are involuntarily featured on the now defunct Tumblr called “The ‘Nice Guys’ of Craig’s List” where users could upload the profiles of self-described “nice guys” looking for women on free dating sites. Here you could read the screen grabs of conversations between “nice guys” and the women who “rejected” them. Should a date seeker decline a suitor’s offer to be “treated like a queen” she can expect a litany of threats and obscenities to follow her into a cat-filled, self-imposed, penis-free spinsterhood. This is Israel in a nutshell. It’s a nation dominated by “nice guys”. And by “nice guys”, I mean entitled, hypocritical, opportunistic, rageaholic predators with persecution complexes.
LOS ANGELES TIMES CARTOON: Poison Pill Politics
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I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).
This week: Governor Jerry Brown of California has submitted a plan to ease prison overcrowding – but says he doesn’t support it. Could this mark the start of Poison Pill Politics?
Shitty Editorial Cartoons By People Who Get Huge Salaries From Newspapers That Refuse to Run Good Cartoons, Even in Syndication
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Some of my colleagues are unhappy that I am, as they put it, airing the dirty laundry by criticizing terrible editorial cartoons. I don’t get it. It’s not like these things are state secrets. They’re published in newspapers. They appear on the Internet. Pointing out that they are terrible doesn’t require speaking out of turn; everybody already knows that they are terrible because only have to do is look at them to see that they are terrible. All I do, as I see it, is describe and articulate why I think they are terrible. It’s not like I have any special power to censor bad editorial cartoons – although that would be great – or that anyone is going to get fired because of something I write. It’s just my opinion. And I suspect that it is an opinion that is more widely shared than the lazy hacks who create this crap would like to think.
And so, without further ado, here’s a look at today’s artistic atrocities by cartoonists who receive huge salaries from newspapers that wouldn’t pay $20 a week to run syndicated editorial cartoons by a good cartoonist. And editors wonder why the newspaper business is in trouble…
First and foremost, this is not a political cartoon. It does not express a political point of view. I happen to know that the cartoonist is a Republican, but you can’t possibly tell that from the cartoon. What is the take away message? College is expensive. Yeah, like everyone didn’t already know that. I’m never going to get the four seconds back that I spent reading that.
This is one of those cartoons that you practically need a decoder ring to figure out. Unless you are the biggest political wonk in the world, you’ve probably forgotten about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and his lame excuse for going AWOL while he was sneaking off to Argentina on taxpayer money in order to visit his girlfriend: that he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. But what really gets me, and it showcases just how old-fashioned mainstream editorial cartooning is, is the reference to the 1970s TV show “Sanford and Son.” I’m nearly 50 years old, and I was 14 years old when the show was canceled in 1977. In other words, I’m about as young as you can be and still remember it. When you do a cartoon that can only be referenced in terms of pop culture by people who are older than 50, you are giving up on the present – never mind the future.
In recent years, in a formatted trope that I think we began with Mike Ramirez, many cartoonists have started doing this below-the-frame caption thing, like the “locked in the attic” here. The effect is incredibly pretentious. It says I am smart and you are not. Ta-daa! Furthermore, the inherent weakness of the metaphor format shows through here. This is a drawing of the suspect in the Cleveland kidnappings. So why is he labeled Cleveland kidnappings? He isn’t the kidnappings. He is the kidnapper. Ultimately, the biggest problem with this cartoon is the simpleminded and vacuous concept behind it: that this is all explained by evil. You know, like he’s possessed by a demon. Which, frankly, if true should allow him to walk free. Or at least walk free after he has his demons exorcized by a crazy priest. Somehow, I doubt that the right-wing cartoonist who drew this cartoon really believes that this guy is possessed by a demon or the devil or Satan or whatever. All you are really left with is: some people are bad. Which, I already knew. And it’s not a political statement. So it should not be marketed as a political cartoon.
When I become cartoon dictator of the world, I am going to ban all editorial cartoons that point to anyone and say: that person is a hero. Editorial cartooning is an inherently negative medium. It is here to criticize, not praise. When you praise anything, you look cheesy and stupid. In this format. The only exception would be if you praise someone who is widely vilified by the mainstream media and American culture.
This runs in Daily Kos. I do not.
Totally retarded. Telling the public or for that matter the victims of a crime that they can take comfort in a fictional Christianesque anti-deity wreaking vengeance on their behalf is cartooning malpractice. Not to mention, now that I think of it, weirdly anti-Christian. Unless Randy is a devil worshiper.
This one… Wow. What the hell?
Alan Gardner Sucks Up To Daryl Cagle
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Once again hack blogger Alan Gardner of The Daily Cartoonist, the boosterish cut-and-paste pseudo-news site, is running interference for ethics-challenged cartoon kingpin/plagiarist enabler/cartoon recycler Daryl Cagle.
Quoting Cagle’s laughable blog (without seeking comment from me, Matt Bors, Ann Telnaes or other cartoonists who have challenged him), Gardner writes: “Daryl Cagle responds to the criticism that by switching positions (and changing a cartoon) that he’s undermining editorial cartooning.”
Of course, no one criticized Cagle for “switching positions” (on whether the Boston Marathon bombing suspect “deserved” his Miranda rights). Nor did anyone criticize him for “changing a cartoon.” Changing cartoons is done all the time.
What Daryl was criticized for was the equivalent of selling weapons to both sides in a war: the reprehensible act of issuing two versions of the same exact cartoon, one pro-Miranda rights, the other anti, and selling both versions at the same time.
Alan Gardner knows that. Which makes him a disgusting, slimy liar.
Either that, or he’s a moron.
I’m giving him credit. I’ll go with lying sack of dung.
SYNDICATED COLUMN: We Are All Soviets Now
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Not-So-Secret “Secret Bombings” Have Big Implications
Did Israel bomb Damascus yesterday? Of course it did. According to Syrian rebel sources, 42 Syrian army soldiers were killed. But Israel – following its customary policy – won’t admit it. This has happened before. Usually, Syria doesn’t say anything about Israeli airstrikes. (The Syrian government’s complaint about Sunday’s airstrike is unusual, and thus cause for concern that the civil war might escalate into a regional conflict.)
According to experts, the official silence following not-so-secret secret bombings reflect the fact that even enemies have to cooperate sometimes. If Syria acknowledges that it has been the victim of what international law and anyone with a dictionary defines as an act of war, Syrian citizens and non-Syrians throughout the Muslim world would pressure the government of President Bashar al-Assad into a war it can’t win. Knowing this, the Israelis – who don’t want a war that could unite the fractious Arabs against them and set the Middle East ablaze – let Assad save face. By refusing to confirm or to deny, they quietly gloat over what everyone knows, that they can come and go as they please over Syrian airspace (or fire long-range missiles from Israeli territory, since even the Syrians don’t seem sure what hit them yesterday).
We live in a time that bears out the most dystopian of George Orwell’s predictions, yet even in a world of bluster and BS few news events are as surreal and mind-blowing as a so-called secret bombing. There is, after all, nothing secret about bombs. Especially when they fall into a densely populated metropolis. Certainly the families of those 42 dead soldiers are in the loop.
“Imagine an airstrike on a US weapons depot and no one claims responsibility,” the political cartoonist Kevin Moore tweet-asked. “Would we be so blasé about it?” We would be if we were a weak nation and the attacker was a strong one.
Not that this is a first-time occurrence.
Older readers remember the so-called secret bombing of Cambodia in 1969 and 1970, when President Richard Nixon ordered the carpet bombing of North Vietnamese supply bases in eastern Cambodia and Laos, a violation of international law. It was a sensational scoop for to readers of the New York Times and members of Congress (who hadn’t been informed), but if you were there, there was nothing secretive about the 100,000-plus tons of ordnance dropped in 3800-plus sorties by American B-52s.
Tens of thousands of Cambodians, including many civilians, were killed.
As far as the rest of the world was concerned, however, the bombings were cloaked by a conspiracy of silence. The international media found out about it right away but coverage was scant and tentative. Cambodia’s leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, supposedly sent his tacit approval through back channels; for its part, North Vietnam couldn’t say boo because they weren’t supposed to be in Cambodia either.
The US drone war in Pakistan bears similarities to Cambodia, though it features a delicious extra dollop of deception.
As I reported in 2010, the United States isn’t so much occupying Afghanistan as it is using eastern Afghanistan as a staging area to launch drone strikes against tribal areas in western Pakistan. Again we have the ridiculous spectacle of something that couldn’t possibly be less secret – Hellfire missiles streaming out of the sky from buzzing drones circling Pakistani cities in broad daylight and blasting homes and cars – while both the Americans firing the weapons and the Pakistani government whose territory they are landing on officially deny knowing anything about them. Although Pakistani officials either claim helplessness in the face of American military might or condemn the drone strikes outright, thousands of people have died in hundreds of attacks under the Bush and Obama administrations as the result of a brutal quid pro quo: the CIA kills political dissidents and other “enemies of the state” on the Pakistani regime’s hit list in exchange for the privilege of killing “terrorists” it deems a threat. (It recently came out that CIA drone operators fire blindly, without knowing who they’re killing.)
The United States has similar arrangements with Yemen and Somalia.
Oh, and the U.S. doesn’t even officially acknowledge that it has a drone program. It’s classified. If it exists. Even though Obama jokes about it.
I wonder whether the lawyered-up officials who gin up these pssst arrangements worry about the geopolitical implications. For at least 200 years – arguably since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 – the Western world has been governed on the basis of strictly defined borders. In the postwar era the United Nations has served primarily as an attempt to enshrine the sovereignty of nation-states. At the core of contemporary international law is the doctrine that invading the territory or airspace is an act of war, particularly when the victim is internationally recognized as sovereign. So how does that square with secret bombings?
If Israel can carry out acts of war against Syria with impunity, without suffering any sanction, and if United States can do the same in Pakistan, who is to say which cross-border incursions of the future are acceptable and which are not? If Syria and Pakistan tacitly consent to their territory being bombed, but don’t sign formal agreements to allow it, can they legitimately claim to be sovereign independent states? It seems to me that both the bombers and the victim countries are messing around with issues with huge potential ramifications without thinking them through.
When political leaders wallow in “who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes” absurdism, citizens roll their eyes and learn to reflexively distrust everything they see and hear from officials and in mainstream media. How, for example, can you take an Israeli government seriously that has had nuclear weapons since the 1970s but refuses to admit it (and sabre-rattles with Iran over its nuclear weapons program, which probably doesn’t exist)? Or a United Nations that refuses to call them to account under nuclear nonproliferation treaties?
The greatest enemy of political stability is alienation. Citizens don’t have to like their leaders to hand them the tacit consent of the governed. But if a regime wants to stay in power, the people have to believe their government more often than not. It can’t be perceived as totally full of crap.
Just ask Mikhail Gorbachev.
Sure, all rules are arbitrary. But once you start breaking your own rules, you undermine the basis of legitimacy for the system you’ve created and hope to perpetuate. If we go back to the basis of nationhood – you have a right to exist if you can carve out borders, defend them, and repel invaders – we unwind the world order that has been in place for nearly half a millennium. Which may be for the better. But it’s probably something that we should all discuss.
In the open.
(Ted Rall’s website is tedrall.com. His book “After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back As Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan” will be released in November by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.)
COPYRIGHT 2013 TED RALL
