An Analysis Of The One Party State

At The Top Of The Political Pyramid, There Is Not Constant Trade Off Between Liberal and Conservative Agendas, There Is Only THE Agenda.

By Morgan Martell

The most widely proliferated truism of American patriotism is that the the two-party system is a beacon of democracy. Surely, our system is better than that of Iran, where presidential candidates must be approved by a religious council, or perhaps that of Venezuela, where the partly state-owned media disseminates propaganda in each election.

Democrats and Republicans are widely different, it seems, at least that is what their hyper-partisan bickering would imply. Bill Clinton must have been an unabashed liberal, otherwise why would the Republicans despise him so much?

But the reality is that Republican and Democrat presidents have followed the same agenda for half a century. The idea that American governance alternates as a sort of give-and-take between liberalism and conservatism is nothing more than a fantasy. I do not discount that there may be serious and significant differences between democrat and republican individuals, many of them Congressman, or perhaps state legislatures. But at the top of the pyramid, where the power to set agendas resides, there is only the Agenda.

It is fascinating how Bill Clinton began his presidential campaign with playing a Saxophone on live television, talking about his foray into Marijuana (although he claimed to have never inhaled), reminiscing about his protest of the Vietnam war, and ended up with perhaps the most reactionary (meaning maintaining the status quo) administration of any president in modern history. And Obama entered the stage as a candidate of change, only to accelerate political elite hegemony faster than any predecessor.

The scope of this article will mostly cover the period from Reagan to present, with a special emphasis on the Clinton and Obama administrations, and will address issue by issue how Democratic and Republican presidents have set the same course on a wide variety of important issues.

Crime

At the end of Reagan's administration, the incarceration rate was 247 per 100,000 citizens. The demand for prison space had been steadily increasing since the War on Drugs began. Under George H.W. Bush the incarceration rate had increased to 332 per 100,000. It is a common misconception that it is Republicans have the more punitive crime policies. Under Clinton, the incarceration rate skyrocketing to 476 per 100,000 over the next 8 years. The Clinton administration gave 30 billion dollars to states to fund their prisons, and under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act added 100,000 new police officers. The bill was written by current Vice President Joe Biden. The act also expanded the death penalty to fall under 60 more offenses, including drug trafficking, and eliminated funding for inmate education.

Private prisons flourished under Clinton. The ACLU in 2011 published a fascinating review of the private prison system you can read here. Since 1990, the private prison population has increased by 1600%. The number of private prison systems actually peaked in the year 2000 with 153 facilities.

The policy that began under Reagan and has been flourishing through both Bushes, Clinton and Obama, can only be referred to as 'mass incarceration'. As of 2013, the United States holds more prisoners than any other country in the world, including China, as well as a larger percentage of prisoners per population than any other country. For an even more sobering comparison, consider that the United States has more people imprisoned today than Stalin had under his archipelago of gulags.

Arms Sales

On the campaign trail, Bill Clinton made this promise: “I expect to review our arms sales policy and to take it up with the other major arms sellers of the world as a part of a long-term effort to reduce the proliferation of weapons.”

And then, in some astounding turn of events (or predictable, for those who have been watching closely),United States arms sales doubled in Clinton's first year in office alone.

In 2006, the United Nations convened in order to create a 'comprehensive, legally binding instrument establishing common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms.' The United States was the only country to vote against the measure. In 2008, Obama signaled that he would change the course from the Bush administration and take steps to limit arms sales internationally. And just like 2 decades earlier, United States arms sales tripled in 2011 By 2012, Obama had ended negotiations on the treaty. Is it any surprise, considering Obama received more campaign donations from the Defense Industry than McCain?

And as of a week ago from the publishing of this article, Obama has begun arming terrorist organizations in Syria.

War

It is another common misconception that during Republican presidencies we have periods of war, and during Democratic presidencies we have periods of peace. Of 'official' wars it is certainly the case that the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq war were begun by H.W. and W. Bush. Though it is important to quantify 'official' because there has not been an official declaration of war since World War II. But Bill Clinton dropped bombs on no less than 4 sovereign countries: Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, and Sudan.

Some of his international military endeavors were exceptionally gruesome. My personal favorite (in other terms, the one that disgusts me the most) is the bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. It is estimated that tens of thousands of civilians died once the supply of medicine was cut off.

And Clinton was able to get away with maintaining one of the darkest stains on America's soiled history, the full-force economic sanctions against Iraq that began with the first Gulf war and ended after Saddam's fall in 2003. The sanctions killed 567,000 children according to the British Medical Societies Lancet. (Later studies have argued the number 350,000 children to be more accurate, for full transparency).

United Nations ambassador Madeline Albright, when asked about these numbers, coldly stated “The price is worth it.”

Obama's first major act of war was a No-Fly zone over Libya which resulted in the removal of Muammar Gaddafi. The media had a well orchestrated propaganda campaign that garnered significant public support for this act.

His second major act of war was the arming of Syrian rebels mentioned earlier, undoubtedly prolonging the horrific civil war. Some of the groups that form the opposition group are terrorist organizations, which makes one recall the policy of Carter and Reagan arming terrorist groups in Afghanistan under Operation Cyclone.

And this section would be incomplete without mentioning the prolonging of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and their extensive use of private contractors.

But the true depths of Obama's war mongering resides in his constant and silent drone war. A policy that started under W. Bush, Obama has expanded the use of drones extensively. He has allowed the usage ofSignature Strikes, whereby drone operators bomb people they do not know, based on movements they find suspicious. Worst of all is the policy of double tapping, bombing the same scene twice after rescuers have come to try and help their fellow citizens. Obama's drones have even bombed funerals.

While the death toll of the Drone war may not be as high as the conventional wars of the Bush family, the moral depravity certainly gives them a run for their money.

Private Military and Intelligence Contractors

In the last section I mentioned Obama's extensive use of private contractors in military and intelligence operations.

It has always been hard to tell exactly how many private contractors are employed by the Federal government, and how many of those are under the umbrella of the Defense Industry. It was under Reagan that the Pentagon's privatization agenda began, and it has continued ever since. An NYU study on the size of government shows that the use of private contractors increased under the Clinton administration by about 25%. It is known that Clinton hired KBR, at the time owned by Halliburton, to build military bases and support troops in Kosovo.

Under Bush, with the Iraq war, was when the use of private contractors skyrocketed. By 2008, the number of private contractors in use in Iraq was 155,000, more than the number of troops, a degree of privatization unprecedented in modern warfare. The public became acquainted with the likes of Blackwater under the Bush administration, with events such as the unprovoked massacres in Baghdad and Fallujah.

I cannot recommend enough the work of investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill regarding Blackwater. If you don't have time for his book, check out his talk on the subject.

During his campaign, Obama promised to cut federal spending on private contractors. It soon became clear, however, that much of the stimulus money would go straight to their pockets. His Afghanistan surge was primarily accomplished through contractors, which made up half of the military forces in the country by 2009. The total number of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan quickly reached 250,000. Security contractors (i.e. private military forces) increased by over 400% under Obama and represent a quarter of all contractors employed by the Pentagon.

The most shocking use of contractors has only recently been revealed. It turns out that they represent a significant amount of the NSA workforce. 483,000 people are employed by private contractors and have 'Top Secret' access. The potential for illicit spying and extortion represented by these numbers is so high as to reach certainty. This is completely mind-blowing and perhaps the most significant threat the American people face today.

Renditions

By now, everyone is familiar with the CIA's policy of rendition, whereby they send suspected terrorists to be interrogated in foreign countries. The process was used extensively during George W. Bush's administration.

But did you know that the process began under Clinton? This PBS Frontline report confirms that the rendition process began in 1995.

In 2007, Obama wrote an article in Foreign Affairs journal stating: “To build a better, freer world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people… This means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law.”

But by 2013 it has become clear that the process of rendition has continued. The Washington Post has reported on some specific cases and I highly recommend checking out The Rendition Project which has been tracking the global rendition system extensively.

Globalization

A key process in globalization involves removing national sovereignty in favor of trade agreements that favor the rights of corporations. Bill Clinton championed the NAFTA agreement, which among other issues superseded articles in the Mexican constitution, water rights in Canada, and allows corporations to sue nations when they are in violation of the trade act.

Regardless of your opinion on NAFTA and other trade agreements, Obama has taken the concept of corporate power over national sovereignty to a whole new mind-blowing level with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, a trade proposal that we only know about because the documents were leaked to the public. You can read the leaked document here. Why the secrecy? The TPP agreement would bestow radical new powers on corporations, including establishing an international tribunal that would override domestic law and would have the power to issue sanctions against governments for failing to abide by their ruling.

The TPP runs contrary to Obama's statement: "We will not negotiate bilateral trade agreements that stop the government from protecting the environment, food safety, or the health of its citizens; give greater rights to foreign investors than to U.S. investors; require the privatization of our vital public services; or prevent developing country governments from adopting humanitarian licensing policies to improve access to life-saving medications.”

And to me the biggest concern is that Congress was kept in the dark along with American citizens, the treaty was negotiated between the Executive branch and corporate executives.

Congressman Alan Grayson summed it up nicely: “It's all about tying the hands of democratically elected governments, and shunting authority over to the non-elected for the benefit of multinational corporations. It's an assault on democratic government.”

But what about taxes? Gay marriage? Abortion? Marijuana?

The crux of the one-party state issue is that the issues involved are the issues that affect the political elite. Issues like gay marriage and abortion can be likened to a pressure valve: the people are forced to exert tremendous amounts of effort to affect social change, essentially utilizing all of the available activism. The minds of the populace are focused on these issues instead of the problems that are actually effecting their lives, such as predatory banks and the steady erosion of civil liberties. And what is the end result? It isn't even federal politicians that affect gay marriage or abortion in the first place, it is the courts and on a state level. Activists go home happy and pat themselves on the back for their 'symbolic victory' when their newly elected president comments on gay marriage. But what is the tangible change?

An issue such as taxes falls under the same category. Ever since Reagan slashed the top tax bracket, the tax burden has been solidly on the middle class. A few percent bump under Obama does not change this, it is simply another pressure valve. The true one percent are unaffected by a small tax increase, their wealth comes from investments and assets.

This is all part of the illusion. Our political system is designed to make us think we have choices when in reality our voice is limited to a couple issues that are unimportant relative to the big picture.

Conclusion

In no uncertain terms, our democracy is an illusion. It is as real as 'Professional Wrestling'. The two parties have consistently followed the same policies, giving American citizens only the illusion of choice. If you took the records of Clinton and Obama and put them under a Republican name, conservatives would cheer their legacy. It is the vitriol and mud-slinging of politics that contributes most to the illusion; without the constant name calling Obama would have long ago ceased to resemble a liberal. When campaigns are in full swing, candidates will refrain from the biggest gun, such as George W. Bush commuting the sentence of only one of the 151 death row cases sent to his desk as Texas Governor: serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, responsible for between 300 and 600 deaths, never brought up on the campaign trail. And at the end of a campaign candidates will become best friends again, when only days earlier they would refer to each other as harbingers of the apocalypse.

There is no trade-off of liberal and conservative agendas in the Executive branch, as the public is led to believe. Rather, Democrat presidencies are designed to placate the populace and give cover for some of the more covert aspects of The Agenda, such as Obama's continuous erosion of civil liberties.

The political elite understand that American 'democracy' is just a game. At the end of the day, they all follow the same agenda. Who is the 'man behind the curtain?'

The Logic Behind Egypt's New Authoritarianism

Abdullah Al-Arian writes:

Power Struggle

For its part, the Muslim Brotherhood, through its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), adopted an untenable position of continually seeking accommodation with the power holders while also claiming to uphold the principles of the revolution, resulting in frequent confrontations that culminated in last summer's presidential race. 

Morsi decree prompts mass protests in Egyptian cities

Morsi's victory and the subsequent power struggle resulted in a government that is essentially Frankenstein's monster run amok, with the Egyptian people, especially those who have repeatedly laid down their lives in the cause of a revolution, ultimately made to pay the price. 

The outrage over Morsi's decree and draft constitution stems in large part from the deep suspicions the Muslim Brotherhood have generated among some segments of Egyptian society, due to the tendency of its leadership to shroud its decisions in secrecy and impose its will on the country's remaining political forces. 

The so-called "dictatorial power grab" and comparisons to Pharaoh are alarming exaggerations, even in a country where hyperbole is common political currency. 

In truth, the Muslim Brotherhood's unrivalled success in every election it has contested - particularly its impressive triumph over the fully mobilised engines of the state in the presidential race - gives it no need to upend its democratic legitimacy. 

Rather than an attack on the popular will, which his party continues to take for granted, Morsi's recent manoeuvers should be read in light of the internal battle among the state's institutions and the escalation they have witnessed in recent months. 

Far earlier than claiming legislative powers for himself, Morsi attempted to reinstate the elected parliament, only to be overruled by the Supreme Constitutional Court. Moreover, the timing of the recent move coincided with the expectation that the high court was to dissolve the upper chamber of parliament, along with the Constituent Assembly, placing immense pressure on Morsi to unilaterally appoint a new committee to write Egypt's constitution. 

The president did not relish in the prospect of appointing a committee he knew would be rejected at the outset by the political opposition, and preferred to allow the current committee to complete its work. While giving him expansive powers in the process, the decree also allowed Morsi to shield the current committee from the court's impending dissolution order. 

The burning question remains, if Morsi believed he lacked the political capital to appoint a new 100-person committee to write the constitution, what possibly possessed him to think the opposition would accept the sweeping nature of his decree, or the rushed constitutional draft that emerged in the current committee's eleventh hour? 

The answer may lie in the Muslim Brotherhood's recent history, which prioritised a strong internal hierarchical structure, or tanzim, that preached strict discipline throughout the ranks and placed a premium on secrecy in the face of repression. From the early 1980s, the legacy of Nasser's suppression and the authoritarianism of the Mubarak regime caused the Muslim Brotherhood's leaders to view Egyptian politics as a zero-sum game. 

Despite the strong push by some younger members to expand outreach into society and pursue incremental changes to the political structures, the senior leadership, aided by some of its cadre of new officials, including Morsi and Khairat al-Shater, promoted an insular Muslim Brotherhood that became deeply suspicious of the rest of Egyptian society. 

Even upon the group's entry into social and state institutions such as the professional syndicates or the parliament, it was only after they dominated those structures that the Muslim Brotherhood's leadership believed they were worthwhile endeavours. That trend has continued throughout the post-January 25 transition. 

The Muslim Brotherhood doubled down from its initial pledge of limiting the number of candidates fielded in parliamentary elections and infamously reneged on its promise not to run for the presidency.

As a recognised political actor, the Muslim Brotherhood was well within its rights to challenge as few or as many of the available offices that it wished. But given the closed nature of its organisational structure, the consistent lack of engagement with competing political forces and its propensity for relying on majoritarianism to quash all dissent within its ranks and now within the broader society, its leaders should not be surprised by the widespread displays of hostility and resentment.

The latest casualty of this dynamic has been the struggle over the new constitution. If the turmoil surrounding the transitional government has thrown Egypt's political life into disarray, the politicisation of the state's foundational document is sure to have long-term consequences.

The most objectionable clauses, whether enshrining the military's privileged status, the checks place on the freedom of expression, or the potential confessionalisation of Egypt's legal system could eventually be undone through the proper channels of revision and amendment.

However, the process of producing and passing this document has the potential to embed a deep-seated polarisation within the heart of Egypt's burgeoning political culture.

Indeed, based on the massive public demonstrations for and against the draft constitution, this has already occurred. Morsi now faces the challenge of bridging a deep divide, a task for which he has thus far proven to be ill-suited, obstructionism of some of the more ideological segments of the opposition notwithstanding.

Having used his democratic legitimacy to shield himself from all accountability, the president has raised the stakes of political competition in Egypt. Given the intensity of the response, however, the unintended consequence of this overreach may be to force a recalculation on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood's political leadership.

In spite of its supposed successes up to this point, the logic of the new authoritarianism cannot hold in a future Egypt that is not only democratic, but embodies the principles of political pluralism as well.

Via: "Al-Jazeera"

Plotting For A Permanent Republican Presidency

By STEVEN JONAS MD,
Courtesy Of "Truth-Out"

Karl Rove was dreaming of what he called “The Permanent Republican Majority.”   That is he thought that he could achieve a majority vote among the 50% or so of US eligible voters who actually vote, for the Republican candidates for the Presidency, on a permanent basis.  In the 2000 election (1) he had achieved less than a majority of the popular vote (47.9% to Gore’s 48.4%, the rest going to minor candidates [mainly the spoiler Ralph Nader]), and had managed a majority of the electoral vote only by getting, as is very known, a one vote majority on the Supreme Court.  But Karl had a big dream.  For 2004 he would construct a true majority, among those actually voting that is, by pulling “his people” to the polls in numbers out of proportion to their proportion among the eligible.

He did that that year by getting anti-gay marriage initiatives of one sort of another onto the ballots in 12 states where pulling homophobes to the polls in numbers out-of-proportion to their numbers in the general population would boost the vote total for George Bush.  The strategy did work in one sense.  Bush did get 50.7% of the popular vote (2).  

But John Kerry actually won the electoral vote, except that Ohio had been rigged by the Republican Secretary of State, who just happened to also be the Ohio chair for Bush-Cheney(!) (3).

(In fact, Kerry had anticipated such a possible outcome and had prepared a $15,000,000 war chest for legal action.  For unknown reasons he chose not to use it [leaving John Edwards, to whom he had promised he would, in a rage.  Of course, Edwards was not a paragon of ethical behavior either, as it turned out, but that’s another story.]  But Rove knew which end was up.  

And the full Ohio vote-count rigging story would have come out a couple of years later if the man at the technical center of it had not somehow been killed in a light plane crash on his way to testify at a hearing on the matter, for which he had indicated that he was going to tell the truth (3).  [It is interesting to note that Senators Paul Wellstone and Mel Carnahan had some years earlier died the same way.])

Given the closeness of both the popular and electoral vote totals, following the 2004 election it became very apparent that he was no longer focusing on a Permanent Republican Majority.  It was too risky if one wanted to keep GOP control of the Federal government.  For the one thing, the proportion of eligible voters actually voting could go up, and they might go to the other side.  That was the lesson of 2008.  For another, how many times could one put homophobe-philic initiatives or similar ones on state ballots?  No, another strategy had to be developed.  And so instead of the Permanent Republican Majority, Rove and his cohorts came up with the concept of the Permanent Republican Presidency.

The strategy has six major components, built up over time.  And if one has been watching GOP actions since the middle of the last decade one can discern them fairly easily. 

First is the cementing of the vote of the Religious Rightists without going to the lengths of coming up with ballot initiatives and similar.  You simply convert the GOP into what Howard Fineman of MSNBC and The Huffington Post has called “The American Faith Party” (4).  

Second, you fake stories of sex and corruption which manage to take down the principal organization whose principal focus is on registering low-income voters, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) (5).  

Third, following the 2008 election (which you hardly minded losing, given the economic pit into which the country was falling due to the policies enacted by your party --- let the other guy take the blame for the outcomes, which blame the GOP is shoveling on him by the truckload this year) you focus on organizing the right-wing vote at the state level through the very well-funded so-called “Tea Party” movement. 

Fourth, once having taken over both Executive and Legislative branches of a number of state governments, with the very active help of the Fox”News”Channel you make the  practice of “voter fraud” the tool through which you enact a series of state laws designed to achieve wide-spread voter suppression.  Since there have been a series of successful court challenges to those laws, it remains to be seen just how successful they will be this time around.  But Rove and his people are on for the long haul.  

Then (fifth) of course there is “Citizens United” and the “Super-PACs.” Thom Hartmann to the contrary notwithstanding, they have not made a qualitative difference in the owning-class control of the state apparatus in the United States which goes back to the days of the Slave Power.  But they surely have made a quantitative difference in the amount of money the Right-wing has to spend on assuring electoral outcomes to their liking.  

Finally (sixth) there is the widespread cheating which began in earnest in 2004 with the substitution of electronic voting, run by GOP corporate allies, for paper or manual machine voting (3). 

Third, following the 2008 election (which you hardly minded losing, given the economic pit into which the country was falling due to the policies enacted by your party --- let the other guy take the blame for the outcomes, which blame the GOP is shoveling on him by the truckload this year) you focus on organizing the right-wing vote at the state level through the very well-funded so-called “Tea Party” movement. 

It remains to be seen how this will play out in this year’s election.  Until the first Presidential debate, Romney had been far enough behind so that cheating in such states under GOP control as Ohio and Florida would have become fairly obvious.  Following the President’s miserable performance in the first debate, Romney started to catch up and gave himself a chance to win even without cheating and with limited voter suppression.  

With Obama’s strong performance in the second debate, the GOP may have to fall back on cheating to secure victory.  But one can be sure, if they are within striking distance of victory for Romney, and cheating will seal the deal they will surely do what it takes, for them (3).

-

1. 2000 General Election Results, http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=2000

2. 2004 General Election Results, http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=2004

3. Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, The Free Press | News Analysis, Tuesday, 16 October 2012, “Will Bain-Linked E-Voting Machines Give Romney the White House?” Republished on Truthout, Oct. 16, 2012, http://truth-out.org/news/item/12130-will-hig-owned-e-voting-machines-give-romney-the-white-house.

4. Fineman, H., "Rise of Faith within the GOP has created America's First Religious
Party," The Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/republican-
party-religion-first-religious-party_n_1322132.html.

5. Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Community_Organizations_for_Reform_Now.

The Talking Heads

“The United States does not have presidential debates in any realistic sense of the word. It holds quadrennial joint appearances by major-party candidates who have been schooled in the art of saying little of consequence in the most absurdly aggressive way. And Americans will be served a full helping this evening.

That is because presidential debates have become the political equivalent of a classic rock radio station. You’ll hear all the hits, and maybe even a few obscure tracks that you’d almost forgotten.

But the whole point of the Barack Obama’s appearance will be to say nothing that harms himself and everything that harms Mitt Romney, just as the whole point of Romney’s appearance will be to say nothing that harms himself and everything that harms Obama.

Neither man will leave his comfort zone. Neither will jump off the narrow track on which this year’s campaign has been running.

In most developed nations—from Canada to Britain to Australia to France—debates are multi-candidate, multi-party affairs. It is not uncommon for five, six, even seven candidates to take the stage. Those countries do not just survive the clashes, they thrive—with higher levels of political engagement than the United States has seen in decades.

Only the most crudely authoritarian states erect the sort of barriers that the United States maintains to entry into the debates by so-called “minor-party” candidates.

And why?

The fool’s argument against expanding the number of contenders is that debates involving more than the nominees of the two big parties—which, conveniently, control the access to the debates through their joint Commission on Presidential Debates—is that it would somehow confuse the electorate. As if Americans aren’t quite as sharp as the French.

Adding more candidates would not create confusion. It would add clarity.”

(John Nichols)

Via: "The Nation Magazine"

The Authoritarian Mind

More than 1,500 Afghans block the highway between Kabul and Kandahar in Seed Abad, Wardak province, Afghanistan, Saturday, May 26, 2012. (Credit: AP/Rahmatullah Nikzad)

Yet Another Afghan Family (and A Bakery In Pakistan) Is Extinguished By An Airstrike: Unleash The Justifications

BY GLENN GREENWALD
SUNDAY, MAY 27, 2012 07:25 AM EDT
Courtesy Of "Salon Magazine"


Yesterday, I wrote about the rotted workings of the Imperial Mind, but today presents a tragic occasion to examine its close, indispensable cousin: the Authoritarian Mind. From CNN today:

A suspected NATO airstrike killed eight civilians — including six children — in eastern Afghanistan, a provincial spokesman said.

The airstrike took place Saturday night in Paktia province, said Rohullah Samoon, spokesman for the governor of Paktia. He said an entire family was killed in the strike.

The LA Times identified the victims as “Mohammed Shafi, his wife and his six children,” and cited the statements from the spokesman for the Paktia governor’s office that “there is no evidence that Shafi was a Taliban insurgent or linked with Al Qaeda.” The Afghan spokesman blamed the incident on the refusal of NATO to coordinate strikes with Afghan forces to ensure civilians are not targeted (“If they had shared this with us, this wouldn’t have happened”). Also yesterday:

An American drone fired two missiles at a bakery in northwest Pakistan Saturday, killing four suspected militants, officials said, as the U.S. pushed ahead with its drone campaign despite Pakistani demands to stop. This was the third such strike in the country in less than a week. . . .

The officials said the victims were buying goods from a bakery when the missiles hit. Residents were still removing the debris, officials said. All of the dead were foreigners, but the officials did not have any information on their identities or nationalities.

All of this is so widely tolerated, even cheered, among large factions of the American citizenry due to three premises:

(1) I have absolutely no idea who my government is continuously bombing to death by drone, but I assume they deserve it;

(2) when my government extinguishes the lives of entire families, including small children, as it often does, I know it’s all for a just and important cause even if I can’t identify it; and,

(3) we have to stop the Terrorists, because they keep killing innocent civilians.

That’s the Authoritarian Mind, and it appears everywhere the Imperial Mind does.

* * * * *

The Washington Post yesterday reported that “on the periphery of Bagram Airfield, farmers, scrap-metal collectors and sheep herders have been crippled, blinded and burned by U.S. military ammunition on an unfenced and poorly marked training ground.” Because “there is no barrier between nearby villages and the range — it is unclear where the dusty townships end and the vast military training area begins,” Afghan villagers routinely stumble into unexploded ordnance and are severely injured or even killed, all because the U.S. military never bothered to demarcate the base. In 2009, its Commander-in-Chief, President Barack Obama, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

UPDATE: This contrast from MSNBC’s home page, as it appears right now, speaks volumes about the mindset of the American government and its establishment media:

For why this is exactly the reverse of what a responsible U.S. media outlet would do, see here.

UPDATE II: ABC News‘ Jake Tapper this morning interviewed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and asked him about civilian deaths caused by U.S. drones: specifically, whether the U.S.’s relentless air strikes in multiple Muslim countries are exacerbating rather than containing the problem of anti-American Terrorism:

TAPPER:  President Obama recently said that — recently told John Brennan, his counterterrorism adviser at the White House that he wanted a little bit more transparency when it comes to drones, which are the – is one of the approaches that you’re alluding to in Yemen.

And “The Times of London” reported last week that the civilian casualties in Yemen as a result of drone strikes have, quote, “emboldened Al Qaeda.”

Is there not a serious risk that this approach to counterterrorism, because of its imprecision, because of its civilian casualties, is creating more enemy than it is killing?

PANETTA:  First and foremost, I think this is one of the most precise weapons that we have in our arsenal.  Number two, what is our responsibility here?  Our responsibility is to defend and protect the United States of America.

And using the operations that we have, using the systems that we have, using the weapons that we have, is absolutely essential to our ability to defend Americans. That’s what counts, and that’s what we’re doing.

Note that Panetta studiously ignored, rather than addressed, the question of whether the U.S. — by continuously killing Muslim civilians and thus intensifying anti-American animus — is creating more Terrorists than it is killing and thus making the U.S. less safe. That’s because there is no answer. Continuously bombing Muslim countries and killing civilians ostensibly as a means of combating anti-American Terrorism is exactly like smoking six packs of cigarettes a day to treat emphysema: one would do it only if one wanted to make the problem worse, or, at best, was recklessly indifferent to the outcome.