And what might have been the bright spot in the mess that seems to be becoming the Obama Administration seems to have disappeared. Chas Freeman, a well rounded an unusually objective diplomat, has recently withdrawn his acceptance of appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC). Suspiciously, the group of republicans which sent a critical email of Freeman criticized him for not toting the line with respect to Israel, yet they have taken collectively several hundred thousand dollars in campaign contributions from PACs related to Israel. It would have been a breath of fresh air, for once, to have someone who is not rabidly pro-Israel with some foreign policy influence in the government. I guess its just too much to ask. And then people wonder why the tin foil hats claim that the government is controlled by Israel. There’s certainly more influence than most people think.

The only change to the existing BCT [Battle Combat Team] structure that is being planned is the addition of advisory and assistance skills rather than any reduction in its combat power. The BCT is organised around two or three battalions of motorized infantry but also includes all the support elements, including its own artillery support, needed to sustain the full spectrum of military operations.
[...]
The plan to deploy several augmented BCTs represents the culmination of the strategy of “relabeling” or “remissioning” of BCTs in Iraq that was developed by U.S. military leaders in the wake of the surge of candidate Barack Obama to near-certain victory in the presidential election last year.

Late last year, Gen. David Petraeus, the CENTCOM chief, and Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, were unhappy with Obama’s pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat brigades within 16 months. But military planners quickly hit on the relabeling scheme as a way of avoiding the complete withdrawal of BCTs in an Obama administration.
[...]
[There] would continue a trend already begun in Iraq in which the BCTs have gradually acquired operational control over the previously independent Military Transition Teams, according to Maj. Robert Thornton of the Joint Centre for International and Security Force Assistance at Fort Leavenworth.
[...]
[A New York Times] report suggests that Obama was well aware that giving the Petraeus and Odierno a free hand to determine the composition of a “transition force” of 35,000 to 50,000 troops meant that most combat brigades would remain in Iraq rather than being withdrawn, as he ostensibly promised the U.S. public on Feb. 27.

And interesting point to note is that the military has been working on formulating policy which would allow them to effectively negate the stated policy of the future president, which at the same time making it superficially appear as though they would be implementing that policy. The military has their own objectives, which do not always align with those of the president they are supposed to serve. This smells very anti-democratic to me. Of course, what would the military know of democracy, except that they’ve been giving it to people around the world for a couple hundred years? Its not new for various parts of the military /security establishment to subvert the intentions of the “democratically” elected President, but we should be aware of just who side they are on (its not ours). Basically under the military policy that Obama has accepted, we are going get more of the same spiced up with a different name.

Now there’s a separate question of what interest the military has in continuing the occupation. I believe that the top brass believes, perhaps rightly so, that the Iraqi central government is still to weak to stand on its own. They are not about to allow the puppet government favorable to their interests, that they’ve spent so much trying to stand on its own, to collapse allowing the potential for real Iraqi freedom.

However, I don’t believe the military is dictating policy to Obama as this would imply that Obama had no choice in the matter. Obama has, supposedly, the last word in military matter, after all he is the “Commander-in-Chief”, the head of the military. Of course, he can be influenced by the brass, and I have no doubt in this instance is, but not a controlling influence. No, Obama is deciding not to pull the troops out, contrary to his campaign promises.

The disconcerting aspect of this is that he appears perfectly willing to present to the public that a troop withdraw is taking place. That is he is willing to let a falsehood stand. Am I the only one that finds this morally reprehensible? Is this the kind of “change” the public was envisioning? Sounds like the same old mierda to me.

Now let’s assume Obama has a compelling reason for changing what I considered one of the pillars of his campaign, though that doesn’t exempt him from coming clean and notifying the public that there has indeed been a change, even if it would be politically difficult. What made him change his position? Is it really possible that he’s gotten new information that has led him to a different conclusion? This month has seen the lowest levels of violence in Iraq since the first year of the war. If this is solely because of the troop surge and that anytime we attempt to decrease troop levels in Iraq violence will increase, how are the US troops ever to leave? Obama must have calculated this during his campaign, and thus must have believed that a 16-month time table was workable. Or could the reason be darker? Was Obama merely capitalizing on anti-war sentiment to garner votes, knowing that once elected all bets are off? Idle speculation aside, the administration needs to become clear on its vision for the troops in Iraq. The more I see of Obama the more I am confirmed in my belief that he is just another politician. You can “hope” for “change” all you want, but you won’t see much of it in the Whitehouse.

Addendum:

The term that has been used internally within the Army to designate the units that will form a large part of the “transition force” is not “Advisory and Assistance Brigades” but “Brigades Enhanced for Stability Operations” (BESO).

For those that don’t know, “beso” is “kiss” in spanish. Is this DoD black humor? The kiss of death for any hope of real Iraqi sovereignty and self-determination? I hope in the coming months Obama grows a backbone and makes good on the promises he’s made to the US public.

Clinton, seeking to illustrate U.S. interest in ending the Bush administration’s acrimonious relations with Moscow, gave Lavrov an oversized red button labeled “reset,” in Russian.

Lavrov needled her by pointing out that because of a translation error by the American staff, the button was labeled not “reset” but “overcharge.” Clinton tried to laugh off the mistake, but Lavrov insisted, “You got it wrong.” A few minutes later, however, he promised to put it on his desk.

– http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-clinton7-2009mar07,0,5950169.story

Really? They can’t get a simple word translated correctly?  And this is the foreign minister.  I hope this isn’t going to be the continuation of a trend into this new presidency.  Not only does it make us look bad, but it shows a lack of respect for the other party.  Even if this was meant as a reconcilliation.  It says “We just don’t give a shit enough to get it right”.

One deals with the origin and factors creating and influencing the early development of the Christian religion. Here’s an interesting excerpt on the subject:

Thus, Christianity did not build a new civilization on the ruins of the old, it was the old civilization (the ruins came later), transformed by a religion that had grown up out of its own internal elements: the uncompromising Monotheism, exclusivity, historical drama, and destiny of Judaism, the divine King so dear to the Egyptians, the Hellenistic mystery religion’s promise of immortality through initiation, the elaborate doctrine and argumentation of Greek metaphysics, and finally the unity and universality that Aurelian and Diocletian had already tried to institute through a cult of Sôl Invictus, the “Unconquered Sun.” The birthday of Christ was even conveniently moved to the birthday of the solar Mithras: December 25th (it’s still on January 6th in Armenian chuches); and it is noteworthy how the push for the divinity of Christ consistently came from the Egyptians — Athanasius of Alexandria had to contend with the Arian sympathies of several emperors. Orthodoxy did not firmly settle on Athanasianism until Theodosius I. But then the Egyptians continued pushing: The orthdoxy of both divine and human natures for Christ was not good enough; the Egyptians would only settle for pure divinity. Condemned at Chalcedon, the Monophysite (“One Nature”) doctrine remains the view of Egyptian Christians to this day.

This seems to explain where various parts of Christianity come from. My conception had been that Christianity had little influence outside of its own organic intellectuals and scholars. I was amazed that the divinity of Christ could be explained as coming from Egyptian Christians and that it makes a lot of sense. Egypt’s history is filled with millenia of divine worship of Kings. This passage has really put Christianity in its historical context.

One of the main points is that the Roman Empire did not collapse over a period of 100 years ending in 476 with the sacking of the capital and overthrow of the emperor of “Rome” as is traditionally taught. But that the empire merely receded from the west to the east, eventually losing Rome, the city conventionally seen as defining the Roman Empire. In this view the empire fell in 1453, with the capture of Constantinople. An interesting fact is that Rome was not the capital at the end of the western empire, but Ravenna for strategic reasons. So Rome was already somewhat decoupled from the empire before the collapse. There is also some interesting analysis as to the unimportance/impracticality of cavalry and the relationship of German “barbarian” tribes to the empire.

However, there are several parts of the article that I take issue with.

You may have a list of rationalizations long enough to circle the Earth, but the truth is that in our monkey brains the old woman next door is a human being while the cable company is a big, cold, faceless machine. That the company is, in reality, nothing but a group of people every bit as human as the old lady, or that some kind old ladies actually work there and would lose their jobs if enough cable were stolen, rarely occurs to us.

Like most of the issues I take with the article, I think this is an over simplification. I think it also has to do with wealth differentials and the cost of your action. The old lady next door is just trying to survive like you and me, only in lieu of a job she has a meager social security check to make her through the month. If you steal from her, you’re stealing from people like you. A missing social security check could actually mean the decrease of her quality of life, perhaps even in the loss of life.

When you steal from the cable company you’re stealing from a legal person, not a real person. Sure a corporation employs many people. They all get a wage, which does not reflect the bottom line. An increase in company profits does not usually translate into a redistribution of those profits among the workers. One tenant of corporate capitalism is the maximization of profits, which translates into the reduction of costs, labor and otherwise. If the company believes that increasing the workers wages will increase its profits it will do that, but it won’t increase the wages because there are more people paying for cable. The increase in profits does go to people, however, and who are they? They are the upper management and shareholders. So if the top 10% own 85% of all stock, the people benefiting are the ones who are already on top. Why should someone be concerned about not contributing to the already overflowing pockets of those who are most well off? Consider it a type of more equitable wealth distribution, where the wealth is not inequitably redistributed in the first place.

There is a reason why all of the really phat-ass nations with the biggest SUV’s with the shiniest 22-inch rims all have some kind of representative democracy (where you vote for people to do the governing for you) and all of them are, to some degree, capitalist (where people actually get to buy property and keep some of what they earn).

So the argument is that capitalist democratic nations are the richest because people are working for the interest of their clan, and thus people they care about. Whereas in a socialist or non-capitalist country, people are working for the benefit of some faceless society whom they mostly don’t care about, so they don’t work as hard or efficiently. This totally ignores history, international economics, and perpetuates the view of humans as greedy individuals. There has been a history of exploitation through deceit and force by these supposedly democratic capitalist nations. These practices are continued today through such international organizations as the IMF, World Bank and WTO. Poor countries are kept poor because in reality capitalism doesn’t like competition. It want cheap labor. So the global south is exploited for its raw resources and cheap labor, but its infrastructure is not built up to to be able to compete with the very countries that are exploiting them. As to this ever present perpetuation of the human as selfish and greedy, it is only true to the extent that it is self-fulfilling due to its omnipresence. This view of the human is convenient for the wealthy because it justifies their own greed and is fundamental to (their) economics.

One thing I do whole heartedly agree with is the end:

First, train yourself to get suspicious every time you see simplicity. Any claim that the root of a problem is simple should be treated the same as a claim that the root of a problem is Bigfoot. Simplicity and Bigfoot are found in the real world with about the same frequency.

Anyone who tries to paint a picture of the world in basic comic book colors is most likely trying to use you as a pawn.

As a strong supporter of independent thinking, that is people thinking for themselves, I recognize that simplification inhibits that. Its a little ironic that my criticisms stem from the article’s over-simplifications, but at the end it rails against simplification. This alludes to the fact that the world is just too complex not to simplify. The key is to simplify by excising unimportant (to the argument) aspects of reality. But this is a hard thing to do, due to our own biases. So the important thing is to always be conscious that we are simplifying, even if we don’t realize it, and look for alternate ways of viewing a situation. Different angles of a situation are the simplification of different areas. This way you can see more complexities as a whole, while in thinking about each angle keeping the complexities to a manageable level. And to be complete, I realize also that I’m making certain simplifications here also. But go ahead an point them out anyway.