(editor’s note: I am still waiting for my good friend Odum to link to my blog as he promised last week. He must be busy!)

Here we go. Tomorrow night President Bush will announce that he is putting more American troops into Iraq. Along with the troop increase, Bush is expected to unveil new diplomatic and economic efforts in the Middle East.

Chattering Classes start your engines.

I hate the Iraq War. My vocal opposition to the war before the conflict started cost me a good job with the Central Intelligence Agency. The debt load that this country is taking on to fight this war will cost my children even more.

I’m one of the lucky ones. In America, we generally all tend to be. For all intents and purposes, this war has cost us little.

And when I say “us” I’m referring to the people who spend their weekends wandering through the mall, closely monitoring Paris Hilton’s latest relationships and complaining, loudly, when gasoline prices at the pump jump 50 cents as their SUVs only get 15 miles to the gallon. Us Americans.

Life is good for us, which is why we went along with this war in the first place without asking too many questions. That, and we were (or is the word I’m looking for “are”?) stupid and lazy.

It’s true – 5% of the world’s population lackadaisically consuming 25% of the world’s resources on a daily basis doesn’t make you smart and active.

Which is why the Republican majority went along with Bush’s insane plans to invade Iraq. Which is also why the Democratic minority went along with it, and the mainstream media to (I’m looking right at you Judith Miller, you coy little fox, playing up your freedom of the press jail time in the vain hope that we would forget that you allowed yourself to be spoon-fed news about Iraq by Cheney’s office. Naughty.).

Anyway, I got my tax cuts, didn’t you? Let’s all have another doughnut.

Now I’m not saying that this war has been cheap, good heavens no! Just because this war didn’t cost us much doesn’t mean that it didn’t cost someone else quite a lot.

Several hundred billion dollars spent, several thousand American troops killed, thirty thousand American troops injured and a quarter-million of Iraqis killed is not “cheap”.

The true cost of the conflict increases exponentially when you consider that starting this war in the first place was never in our national security interests. In fact, it was on this very point that the CIA and I parted ways (I exacerbated the break by snottily depositing Brent Scowcroft’s Wall Street Journal Op-Ed saying the exact same thing on my case worker’s desk).

Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11, no connection to non-state actor terrorist organizations, no weapons of mass destruction and, believe it or not, was actually a stabilizing force in the Middle East in terms of keeping pumps to the world’s largest oil patch on and flowing.

And keeping those pumps on is in fat America’s national security interest.

Iraq was not our problem until we made it our problem.

And then our insane invasion made Iraq our problem.

So here we are.

We have three options about what we as a country are going to do to move forward in Iraq (even after Senator Biden holds hearings we are still only going to have these same three options).

Option one is to stay the course and continue to do what we have been doing in Iraq.

Option two is to re-deploy all of our troops immediately. It will take about 6 months and must be facilitated by the Congress cutting off funding for the war, which they can do.

Option three is to put in more troops. A lot more troops. This is the McCain option. It is the only option.

Senator McCain’s recent editorial on sending more troops to Iraq:

  “There is no guarantee of success in Iraq. We have made many mistakes since 2003, and these will not be easily reversed. But from everything I have recently witnessed, I believe that success is still possible.

  Even greater than the costs incurred thus far and in the future are the catastrophic consequences that would ensue from our failure in Iraq. By surging troops and bringing security to Baghdad and other areas, we will give the Iraqis the best possible chance to succeed. Our national security, and that of our friends and allies, compels us to make our best effort to prevail, and to do it immediately.”

Senator McCain’s full editorial may be found here:

McCain is right. The man is a patriot who is an expert on national security.

And, no one said maintaining an empire was easy. Or pretty. Still want another fast food hamburger fat to chow down in your SUV fat boy?

America asked for this carnage and now we have it. There is nothing left to do but cry. And kill.

( – promoted by odum)

I read something encouraging in today’s Times Argus.  The Vermont Legislature is proposing a tax on new homes built over 4,000 square feet. Be ready for the free-market whine brigade to start complaining:  Under the Senate version of the proposed law, those who put up new houses larger than 4,000 square feet would be charged unless their buildings were energy efficient.

A similar bill likely to be introduced soon in the House is even tougher. Fees assessed under that proposal on such large houses will go directly to a fund promoting renewable energy production in the state.

Rep. Tony Klein, D-East Montpelier, said he will introduce his House bill, which would impose a $1,000 per-square-foot surcharge on the construction of houses over 4,000 square feet.

“It’s meant to make people think about what they are doing,” said Klein, who added that to some extent all Vermonters underwrite the cost of energy and other impacts of large new homes. “When they build these homes, everybody in Vermont has to pay for it,” he said.

Of course, the builders associations are opposed:

“It’s just ridiculous. It’s just awful,” Joe Sinagra of the Homebuilders and Remodelers Association of Northern Vermont said of Klein’s proposal. “We have a housing crisis and you are adding an additional cost on housing.”

Of course, Sinagra fails to mention that the very real housing crisis in Vermont has to do with affordable housing, not second homeowners who can afford to build a second home over 4,000 square feet. As I look deep within my heart to try and find some compassion for them, it’s just not there. Sorry.

I support this strongly, especially on philosophical grounds; namely, there’s a huge contingency of Americans who seem oblivious to the idea of taking and using much more than necessary,  regardless of the impact it has on society and the planet. Maybe this will, as Klein said, ‘make people think about what they’re doing.’ Or not.

Crossposted at five before chaos and Daily Kos.

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Why do these things go together?  It’s the stupidity, stupid.  All the talk about a clash of civilizations misses a crucial point.  As the old song says, it takes two to tango.  Frankly, Islam is not a civilization, it is a late civilization.  It probably died because of the writings of al-Ghazali, a thousand years ago.  al-Ghazali slammed the door on new ideas and any sort of cross fertilization. 
In any event, Islam is fairly primitive in many ways.  Whatever the merits of the theological disputes in Christianity (even admitting most of them are really about power), the major split in Islam (Sunnis and Shiites) revolves around a dispute about dynastic succession about thirteen hundred years ago.  While it is true that Christianity has much to be guilty about in terms of forced conversions; it initially gained traction by the force of its ideas until it became the established religion of the Roman Empire.  Judaism has always been in house, as it were.  Islam from the get-go was militaristic and imperialistic. 

A civilization boasts its on-going traditions of art, music, literature.  Japan, China, India boast large and vast cultural treasures.  Name one Islamic movie?  Name one Islamic opera?  Name the Islamic Shakespeare.  They don’t exist.

Living in a dead culture only produces resentment and hatred as all creative pathways are foreclosed. 

George Bush is doing his best to kill our civilization.  He really is not different from Osama Bin Laden except he’s chalked up a larger body count.

So the question is: how far has Bush gotten in his murder of our culture?

Watching the reality show about casting the leads in a forthcoming Broadway revival of Grease, I am sorry to say that the patient is in critical condition.  Here’s why.

The contestants sang songs from Grease.  In the real world of a living culture, one never auditions with songs from the show you’re auditioning for?  Why?  A nano brain cell will tell you that the director of the new production will have his or her own concept and will not want to hear someone else’s (the original?) take on the role.  Those who sang other songs missed the point as well: sing a song that demonstrates your range as being appropriate for the role you’re auditioning for.  Why anyone would sing a song from Guys and Dolls in an audition for Grease makes no sense.  More importantly, the general level of denial of reality is so high as to make me believe that the mass of Americans have gone mad.  Sandy is supposed to be an attractive high school student.  Why would an obese thirty-something even consider auditioning?  Why would someone think that telling the panel that he’s auditioning for his late brother is a plus?  Why would the program hire a Bush (they really did!) who, on the first, episode even broke the rules of the bizarre contest — family tradition I guess.

I know this sounds trivial in light of the paragraphs above, but this really is how a culture dies.  Grease isn’t even that great a show.  I wonder what its shelf-life will be.  It is competent enough, but it was a nostalgia show for adults remembering their high school days.  High school is so different now that the new nostalgia will be very different..

But there’s some good news on the cultural front: Spring Awakening and Grey Gardens.  The first is a high school musical about what it’s really like being an adolescent  and the most exciting musical about  adolescence I’ve seen since the original production of West Side Story.  In the second, Christine Ebersole gives a performance as incredible as the storied Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie.  Wow!!!  People will be talking about this for the next century, if we have a next century.

I’m not kidding. Please believe me when I say I WISH this wasn’t true, but it seems to be. From the AP by way of Kos and newsfortheleft:

South Carolina Democrats expect to hold the first debate of the 2008 presidential cycle on April 26 at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg County, the largest concentration of black voters in this early voting state.

The hour and a half debate at the historically black college will be televised live nationally by MSNBC, state party Chairman Joe Erwin said Monday outside the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. auditorium.

I don’t know about the rest of you, I just need a little more time between election cycles. This is gonna make me insane. I’ve been trying to ignore the Obamapalooza all around me, but I suppose it’s now completely topical.

And the Presidential drives everything else. Expect an electoral trickle-down that’ll bring the local Vermont cycle into higher gear much sooner as well (at least among political junkies – not so much the general public). Ten-to-one, this is going to necessitate that potential statewide candidates in Vermont make serious moves before the end of the 2007 session.