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And the key national security decisions being made by Washington in recent years have been choices not necessities, far different than, say, the unpalatable constraints faced by decision-makers when Hitler began his global adventure. But it is not just the obvious fact that Iraq was a war of choice unrelated to the struggle against bin Laden that makes the current situation so different from facing an invasion. The original decision to respond to 9/11 with war rather than a police action was itself a choice, as was the decision to invade Afghanistan rather than give diplomacy a chance. The argument applies to any number of major decisions since 2001 as well, including the choice to destabilize the 2006 Palestinian regime after Hamas won a democratic electoral victory, the choice to support Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon, and the choice to rely on threats rather than inducements to influence Iran. Needless to say, aside from the occasional protest of a Dennis Kucinich or a Mike Gravel, the Democrats were fully complicit in the fundamental U.S. post-9/11 national security strategy as well.
Given the depressingly rapid evaporation of the enthusiasm evoked by the electoral message of "change," it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Democratic side of the ruling elite is far too complicit in the fundamental elitist policies on health care, economics, the environment, and national security to offer a strategic alternative.
In sum, it appears that only a reorganization of the national political structure akin to that when the then-innovative and crusading Republican Party was invented in 1856 will open the door to the policies required to protect American society in the 21st century.
The very secretive White House discussions about Afghanistan, discussions that evidently focused on tactics to the exclusion of any serious examination of fundamental strategy, are the most recent and most blatant case in point. Was the question of a non-military solution that addressed the needs of the Afghan people and the dangers of a global heroin epidemic even raised by the little group of military men and conservative politicians at Obama's table? Does Obama even know Malalai Joya's name? The rigid White House attitude toward Iran, at a point where the Iranian domestic decision-making process had obviously crumbled into incompetence and needed breathing space for restructuring, and utter caving in to pressure by Netanyahu complete the circle: the wagons of traditional national security thinking in Washington are drawn tight against the arrows of innovation.
Similar arguments could be made for the attitude toward alternative policy options in the other key arenas, but perhaps a brief checklist of what those alternatives might be will suffice:
- Empire -- oppose it, for empire is democracy's worst enemy; cut back foreign bases and resurrect diplomacy as the conflict resolution tool of choice; on Afghanistan, take the moral high road by focusing on ending the drug trade and minimize American boots on the ground by urging a global Islamic crusade to protect the Afghan population; on Israel, support the population but oppose the Greater Israel mini-empire project;
- Health care -- a service and a right for all;
- Environment -- start with strict enforcement of current laws to protect the nation's air and drinking water; restructure the tax system to, at a minimum, make corporations pay reasonable market prices for access to national forests and mineral resources; include environmental degradation in calculations of cost;
- Economy -- regulate first, compensate second; compensate individuals first, main street second, Wall St. last; tax to encourage work rather than financial manipulations (e.g., tax each derivative trade at a rate greater than the income tax rate paid by the average American worker).
Those are just a taste of the banquet of policy options available to a patriotic U.S. government dedicated to serving the American public. But getting there will require that the American people realize their own best interests and organize to defend them.
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