May Day 2009!

The spirit of May Day is summed up in the old IWW slogan: "An injury to one is an injury to all." An injury to undocumented workers is an injury to the entire working class. So...

APRIL 30TH - 100TH DAY ACTION IN DC!!!
Witness Against Torture (WAT) is looking for some folks who are willing to risk arrest in DC on April 30th in an action to call attention to the plight of the 60 men at Guantanamo who have been cleared for release but still languish there. Contact: lydiaiwk@gmail
10am: Gather @ the Capital Reflecting Pool
11:15am: Procession in jump suits to the White House
12:15 Action @ the White House

MAY DAY 2009
Chicago, IL: MARCH ON MAY FIRST, MARCHA EL PRIMERO DE MAYO
Union Park, Ogden and Ashland
10:00 AM-04:00 PM

Detroit MI: 4th Grand Peaceful March
10:00 AM, Start at W. Vernor & Woodmere
RALLY at Clark Park at 12:00 Noon

Oakland, CA: Students/Youth MARCH to City Hall!
GATHER at High St. and International Blvd.
10:00 AM-01:00 PM

Salem, OR: Unity March
Oregon State Capitol, 900 Court St. NE
11:00 AM-03:00 PM

Madison WI: March for the poor, immigrants & workers
11:00 a.m. Gathering at Brittingham Park
11:45 p.m. Depart Park to the Capitol
12:00 p.m. Capitol event
12:30 p.m. Depart Capitol to City-County Building
12:45 p.m. City-County event

Louisville, KY: May Day Rally
11:30 a.m. Gather at Courthouse for March (Broadway & 6th) Noon: Rally at Jefferson & 6th

Milwaukee, WI: Statewide Immigrant & Labor Rights March
12:00 noon Depart from 5th and Washington Streets to Veteran's Park

Montpelier, VT: Rally
Vermont Statehouse, 111 State St.
12:00 PM-03:00 PM

New York, NY: May Day Rally for Workers and Immigrants Rights
Union Square, 14th Street & Broadway
12:00 PM-07:00 PM

1:30 pm, Madison Square Park
(23rd St, Broadway & 5th Av, 6 or N train to 23 St)
(New York Immigration Coalition)

2:00pm, RALLY at SARA ROOSEVELT PARK in CHINATOWN
(Grand St. between Forsyth and Chrystie St.,
B/D Train to Grand St. Station)
3:00pm, MARCH to UNION SQUARE
[Break the Chains Alliance]

San Francisco, CA: SF May Day March And Rally
Dolores Park - 12 noon, Civic Center - 4 PM
12:00 PM-08:00 PM

Los Angeles, CA: Downtown Los Angeles March to I.C.E. Detention Facility
W Olympic Blvd & S Broadway
01:00 PM-04:00 PM

May 1st March
1:30 PM Meet at Echo Park, Echo Park & Park Ave.
4:30 PM Rally and postcard action at La Plactia Olvera 535 N. Main Street

Washington DC: May 1st Rally
Malcolm X Park, W St. NW and 16th St. NW
03:00 PM-06:00 PM

Las Vegas, NV: May 1st Justice for Immigrants March
3:30 Meet-up Commercial Center, Sahara and Eastern
5:00 March to Federal Courthouse
03:30 PM-06:30 PM

Seattle, WA: 9th Annual May 1st March & Rally
Rally 3:30PM Judkins Playfield (behind St. Marys Church - 611 20th Ave S)
March 4:00PM

PITTSBURGH, PA: May Day - International Workers' Day
4:00 p.m. Vigil at ALLEGHENY COUNTY JAIL, 2ND AVE.
5:00 p.m. March for Immigrants' Rights

Riverside, CA: Immigrants / Workers Rights = Human Rights
March from Cesar Chavez Community Center, 2060 University Avenue
to Riverside City Hall, 3900 Main Street
04:00 PM-06:00 PM

Minneapolis, MN: Immigrant & Workers Rights March & Street Festival
From Lake Street & 13th Ave S to Street Festival at 29th & Nicollet
04:00 PM-08:00 PM

Miami, FL: MAYDAY MIAMI 2009!
Downtown Miami, 100 Chopin Plaza
04:00 PM-08:00 PM

Santa Cruz, CA: May 1st March & Rally for Immigrant & Worker Rights
Watsonville Plaza to Main Street and Beach Street
04:00 PM-09:00 PM

San Jose, CA: May Day Action
Story Rd. & King Rd. to City Hall (Santa Clara St. & 4th St.)
04:00 PM-06:00 PM

Gainesville, FL: Mayday Demonstration
Kirby Smith Community Center, 620 East University Ave.
04:30 PM-06:30 PM

Kalamazoo, MI: May Day March
5:00 pm, St. Joseph Gymnasium, 930 Lake St.

SAN ANTONIO, TX: International Workers Day March
6:00 p.m., Milam Park In Front of Santa Rosa Hospital

Wichita, KS: May Day March
City Hall, 455 N. Main Street
06:00 PM-08:00 PM

Why the Media Coverage is Scarier than the Tea Parties Themselves

Robert Parry at Consortiumnews.com:

By and large, the Washington press corps continues to function within a paradigm set in the 1980s, mostly bending to the American Right, especially to its perceived power to destroy mainstream journalistic careers and to grease the way toward lucrative jobs for those who play ball.

The parameters set by this intimidated (or bought-off) news media, in turn, influence how far Washington politicians feel they can go on issues, like health-care reform or environmental initiatives, or how risky they believe it might be to pull back from George W. Bush’s “war on terror” policies.

Democratic hesitancy on these matters then enflames the Left, which expresses its outrage through its own small media, reprising the old theme that there’s “not a dime’s worth of difference” between Democrats and Republicans – a reaction that further weakens chances for any meaningful reform.

This vicious cycle has repeated itself again and again since the Reagan era, when the Right built up its intimidating media apparatus – a vertically integrated machine which now reaches from newspapers, magazines and books to radio, TV and the Internet. The Right accompanied its media apparatus with attack groups to go after troublesome mainstream journalists.

Meanwhile, the American Left never took media seriously, putting what money it had mostly into “organizing” or into direct humanitarian giving. Underscoring the Left’s fecklessness about media, progressives have concentrated their relatively few media outlets in San Francisco, 3,000 miles away – and three hours behind – the news centers of Washington and New York.

By contrast, the Right grasped the importance of “information warfare” in a modern media age and targeted its heaviest firepower on the frontlines of that war – mostly the political battlefields of Washington – thus magnifying the influence of right-wing ideas on policymakers.

One consequence of this media imbalance is that Republicans feel they can pretty much say whatever they want – no matter how provocative or even crazy – while Democrats must be far more circumspect, knowing that any comment might be twisted into an effective attack point against them.

So, while criticism of Republicans presidents – from Ronald Reagan to the two Bushes – had to be tempered for fear of counterattacks, almost anything could be said against a Democratic president, Bill Clinton or now Barack Obama, who is repeatedly labeled a “socialist” and, according to Beck, a “fascist” for pressuring hapless GM chief executive Rick Wagoner to resign.

Learning From 2008

A new dvd film explores the uses of new media in electing Obama. The filmmaker, Danny Schecter, interviews Benjamin Barber, author of Jihad vs. McWorld, who says:

There are websites of young people who are deeply involved in the campaign who talk to one another, and now it would be very interesting because now that Obama's President, they will find that websites and some horizontal campaigns of young people involved with him, (are) now looking at him critically. And using the web to challenge him, to live up to what these young people believed he promised them and so on.

The film, "Barack Obama, People's President," brings insights like these to the fore. In an op-ed for Common Dreams, Schecter suggests:

The progressive critics of Obama, disappointed by his appointments and some of his cautious policies, have to go beyond railing in print or crying in their beer. They have to reach out to the grassroots army that assured his election. This means being willing to dialogue with liberals and younger people who don't label their politics. Reminding them of the role they played in a historic election may be one way to do that - to appeal to the instincts that led them to engage in the campaign for "change." There's no need to deify Obama - but there is an imperative to reenergize his base....

This is the new direction our politics has taken. It is a story that may be somewhat threatening to old media - and older activists - who prefer a one to many approach to communication, as opposed to forging a more interactive empowering platform. There is no question that young people - especially those mobilized by Obama - prefer online media and that choice is making it harder and harder for traditional outlets to sustain their influence and, in some cases, even their organizations.

To which I would add, new media can mobilize, but organization requires physical human contact. The generations have a lot to learn from each other. ey

The Tea Baggers and the Bizarro Revolution

The Tea Baggers and The Bizarro Revolution

by John Delloro (originally published on the Asian American Action Fund blogsite and soon to be posted on www.LAProgressive.com)

4/15/09

The 2009 Tax Day “Tea Party” protests remind us of the stubbornness of Bizarro politics.

On the cube-shaped Bizarro World, the backward planet of DC comic’s universe, a salesman hawks bonds “guaranteed to lose money for you” and the larger populace works towards imperfection. The code of opposites is the rule of the land. Greed ushers good will. Compassion breeds corruption and laziness. To work against one’s interests is to serve one’s best interests.

If the “tea baggers” had dusted off their history books, they would have been struck by the traditions they shared with the citizens of Bizarro World when they laid claim to the legacy of the 1773 Boston Tea Party.

Like the current day activists who rallied against the greed and abuses of huge global corporations, the Boston Tea Party participants railed against the largest and most powerful transnational corporation at that time--the British East India Company. It was a time of financial crisis and the British East India Company, who pervaded almost every aspect of British society, was on the verge of bankruptcy. The British East India Company aggressively lobbied the British government for laws to aid them, especially their expansion into the American colonies. When the government freed the corporate behemoth of paying taxes on importing tea into the colonies, the colonists rebelled. They knew the British East India Company would wipe out the many small local businesses in the colonies by undercutting their prices and stifling the stirring entrepreneurial impulses that would come to define the modern American Dream. The populist-driven anger culminated in a small group, under the veil of night and disguise, dumping the newly arrived imports into the sea.

The fact that the colonists paid taxes while the largest corporation in the world received a hefty tax cut undergirds their slogan, “Taxation without Representation.” For them, the British government placed wealthy corporate interests before their own.

In contrast to the Boston Tea Party and in true Bizarro fashion, the April 15, 2009 “Tea Party” protests targeted Obama’s program which would raise taxes for the wealthy top 2% while providing a tax cut for 95% of the population.

In total Bizarro-speak, they shouted, “Obama is raising our taxes,” even though President Obama’s tax cut “covers the most people in the history of this country” (See www.whitehouse.gov for details of his tax proposal).

They defended the wealthy and said, “The rich pay too much—72% of all income taxes” while ignoring the fact that the large percentage is because wealth concentration is at its highest since the Great Depression. In other words, they make more money but they have been paying a declining rate over the years (In 1980, it was 45% and during the Clinton years, it was 28%. In fact, the top 2% paid a higher rate of about 10% more under Reagan than Clinton. Obama’s plan would have the top 2% at the Clinton rate. I highly doubt these same “tea bagger” leaders would be vehemently protesting Reagan). According to the latest General Accounting Office Audit (2004), 71% of foreign corporations doing business in the US and 61% of US corporations paid no taxes from 1996 to 2000.

Despite three decades of escalating income inequality, tea baggers still believe if the wealthy get to keep more of their wealth, the better off all working people will be (In 1980, the average CEO pay was 42 times the average US worker pay. By 2006, the average CEO pay was 364 times the average US worker pay).

It is not a surprise that one of the leaders of the tea baggers is conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, the queen of Bizarro World and an Asian American woman who wrote a book justifying the US government’s forcible internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

After many years of Reagan to George W. Bush policies which oriented government services towards the corporate elite, the tea baggers want to forgo their own tax cut and spending on them in order for the richest to pay less taxes.

The original Bizarro eventually destroyed Bizarro World in order to become the exact opposite of Superman. The seeds of self-destruction have already been carefully cultivated.

(Note: for more information about the Boston Tea Party, see Thom Hartmann's essay "The Real Boston Tea Party was an Anti-Corporate Revolt" on www.commondreams.org).

EFCA and the Secret Ballot Hype

After searching the web for a simple, direct explanation of EFCA, refuting the charges of the anti-labor crowd, I am pleased to present this letter to the editor of the Daily Herald, a Chicago suburbs daily:

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is designed to correct flaws and erosions in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by making it easier for employees to form unions, and make penalties stiffer for employers that impede this process.

The claim that the EFCA will eliminate the secret ballot is a bogeyman offered up by management to scare workers, and not backed by facts. The NLRA currently requires employees to sign a petition requesting an election to determine union representation. If 30% of workers sign up, the petition is submitted to the employer, who decides whether to hold a secret ballot. Even if a majority of the employees favor organizing a union, the employer is under no compulsion to recognize or bargain with it.

The EFCA states that if 50% of workers sign the petition, the union is automatically certified and the employer must bargain with it. However, a secret ballot election can still be held if 30% of employees sign a petition requesting one. This moves the decision from the employer to the employees and is opposed by most employers. Wages are about 90% of what they were in the early 1970s, when almost a fourth of workers belonged to a union. Today, about 12% are union members. The percentage of national income that went to wages and benefits has been dropping as fast as employer profits have been rising, with the decline of union membership playing a big role. Strong unions result in higher wages, better benefits, and safer work places for more than just its members.

If passed, the EFCA will help restore the balance between labor and management, expand the purchasing power of working Americans, create more demand for products and services, and help our economy recover and grow.

Bill Slankard
Arlington Heights

ey

Background to the Crisis in Thailand

The Bangkok Post:

April 10, 2009 -- In Pattaya, demonstrators -- members of the National United Front of Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), aka Red Shirts -- broke the police cordon around the hotel where the ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) summit was to be held, demanding the resignation of the illegitimate government. The Thai government responded by declaring a state of emergency in Pattaya. The summit was cancelled.

Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a political scientist living in exile from Thailand, writes:

April 13, 2008 -- When watching and commenting on the recent events in Thailand, observers need to hold on to some basic principles. These are:

1. No government anywhere in the world has the right to use troops to gun down protesters in the streets, especially when they are not carrying firearms. The Abhisit government's use of the army to kill people in cold blood is an outrage. It is not “restraint” nor “the application of the Rule of Law”. It puts the Thai government on the same level as the Burmese junta and its aims are the same too ... to hang on to illegitimate power and protect the interests of the privileged.

2. If observers want to pontificate about the “Rule of Law”, then they must first denounce the illegal military coup of 2006, the lack of partiality and accountability among the judiciary in dissolving the elected parties of government, the illegal seizure of Government House and the airports by the misnamed royalist Peoples' Alliance for Democracy (PAD), the use of firearms and bombs by the PAD, the illegal bribes and threats to manoeuvre the Democrat Party into power, the illegal government-backed Blue Shirt gangs, who carried firearms and the illegal and extra-constitutional role of the palace and the king's advisors in frustrating the functioning of democracy. None of the above cases have been punished.

3. There is a clear line between democracy and dictatorship. “Thai-style democracy” is an elite myth. The Yellow Shirts have repeatedly failed to respect the democratic wishes of the majority of the population. They want more appointed public positions and less power to the electorate. They want a “New Order”. They want censorship. They back the draconian lese majeste law which stifle the basic right to freedom of speech. The Red Shirts may not be angels, but they want a genuine democratic process without interference from the military, the king's advisors or the palace. They would prefer to use the more democratic constitution of 1997, rather than the present one drafted by the military.

4. The anger of the Red Shirts over the past few days did not come out of nowhere. Since 2006 the majority of Thais have continually been abused politically by the elite Yellow Shirts, the mainstream media and middle-class academics. When pictures of Red Shirts smashing the PM's car are shown, it is dishonest and bad journalism not to explain this.

5. The majority of Red Shirts support Taksin, not because they like to “hero worship”, but because his government brought in a universal health-care system and other pro-poor measures. The Democrat Party and the Yellow Shirts opposed these policies all along and knew that they couldn't win popular elections as a result. This is why they wanted a coup.

6. Most of the Thai elite are corrupt, especially army generals and politicians. Why single out just Taksin? We need to punish them all or none at all.

7. The entire Thai elite support the use of state violence, whether it be in the [mainly Muslim] south of Thailand, in the "war on drugs" or against unarmed protesters. Taksin has to take responsibility for gross human rights abuses while he was prime minister. So does the rest of the elite, including Abhisit and the generals. There is a long history of Thai state crimes and we need to challenge this. We can start with denouncing the cold-blooded murder by troops on the streets of Bangkok this April.

Big Biz Ad Blitz Against EFCA

Here comes the Wall Street Journal today:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is launching a $1 million television advertising campaign that takes a new line of attack against the Employee Free Choice Act, highlighting a provision that would allow federal arbitrators to set the rules for unionization if management and employees fail to negotiate their own deal.

The Chamber TV spots running in the home states of key senators on the issue feature management-level employees saying the legislation would allow "a bureaucrat from Washington" to tell people how to run their businesses.

The new Chamber ads will hit the airwaves in Nebraska, Virginia, Louisiana, North Dakota and Colorado -- states whose senators could be swing votes on the issue.

The business lobby's ads follow a new round of union-backed TV ads designed to build support for the bill. One TV spot, launched Thursday, is called "Greed" and seeks to tap anger over Wall Street bailouts to aid the union cause.

Companies think they "deserve bailouts and bonuses for bringing our economy down, and then turn around and try to keep workers from joining unions to earn better wages and benefits," the narrator says as images of Wall Street flash on the screen.

A second ad that began running last week says the legislation would improve the lives of workers and help the economy. Labor unions have spent $10 million on ads for the bill since Labor Day. Besides TV ads, unions have hung 50-foot banners on a dozen office buildings in Washington that bear personal testimonials from employees about how unions help workers.

The Employee Free Choice Act currently lacks the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate. Opposition to the proposal until now has focused on a provision that would make it easier for unions to organize without secret-ballot elections. A coalition of pro-business organizations has spent more than $30 million on TV ads in the past few years portraying the secret-ballot provision as antidemocratic. That campaign pressured several key senators to reverse their prior support, leaving the bill several senators short of 60 votes.

Now, industry is shifting its focus to a binding-arbitration measure included in the same legislation. Steven Law, who leads the Chamber's lobbying effort on the bill, said the Chamber doesn't want to see a compromise that involves accepting arbitration in exchange for unions dropping the ballot provision. "Mandatory binding arbitration is anathema," he said.

Bill Fletcher on EFCA

In the Black Commentator:

The announcement of efforts to pass the Employee Free Choice Act—legislation to make it easier for workers to join or form unions—was accompanied by the announcement of efforts on the part of corporate America to derail it even before it entered Congress. Now that the legislation is in Congress, the battle lines have been drawn. But corporate America has been handling this situation in a very sly way. They are framing their opposition to EFCA in terms of their allegedly protecting the right of workers to a secret ballot election to choose a union....

In order for it to pass, millions of people need to be mobilized to realize that EFCA is not about building the union-as-institution, but about expanding democracy and advancing a process that has historically proven to be a mechanism to raise the living standards of working class people. That is the significant challenge that faces organized labor and its allies, but it is a challenge that must be addressed if the fight for EFCA is to be understood by the people of this country as a fight that they must themselves enter.

Bill Fletcher, Jr., is co-author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. ey

Be Careful What You Lie About

[graphic from far right site GOPMOM]

Scene 1: Cons See Red, Cry Wolf:

Alabama Congressman Launches Socialist Witchhunt

Exception magazine, April 09, 2009

Congressman Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee, has declared there are 17 "socialists" in the US House of Representatives. In a throwback to the Joseph McCarthy communist witchhunt of the Cold War, Rep. Bachus could count the exact number of "socialists" but couldn't provide one name.

But [Bachus] said he is worried that [Obama] is being steered too far by the Congress: "Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists."

Asked to clarify his comments after the breakfast speech at the Trussville Civic Center, Bachus said 17 members of the U.S. House are socialists.

Scene 2: Be Careful What You Lie About

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

The Rasmussen report goes on:

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism....

It is interesting to compare the new results to an earlier survey in which 70% of Americans prefer a free-market economy. The fact that a “free-market economy” attracts substantially more support than “capitalism” may suggest some skepticism about whether capitalism in the United States today relies on free markets.

Other survey data supports that notion. Rather than seeing large corporations as committed to free markets, two-out-of-three Americans believe that big government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.

Fifteen percent (15%) of Americans say they prefer a government-managed economy, similar to the 20% support for socialism. Just 14% believe the federal government would do a better job running auto companies, and even fewer believe government would do a better job running financial firms.

Most Americans today hold views that can generally be defined as populist while only seven percent (7%) share the elitist views of the Political Class.

One conservative blogger sums it up:

We're a nation of populist free-market-loving anti-capitalists who sorta like socialism as long as the government doesn't run things.

Or to quote the late Chicago columnist Mike Royko:

Americans are people who love capitalism and want the benefits of socialism without paying taxes.

Hendrik Hertzberg draws a different conclusion:

[...] all the conservative shouting about how Obama is a socialist has had the unexpected effect of educating a sizable portion of the public to think of socialism as synonymous with “European socialism” (i.e., democracy plus private industry plus nice, soft, 400-thread safety nets) instead of Soviet-style “socialism” (i.e., totalitarianism plus gigantism plus poverty).

The missing piece in this jigsaw puzzle is democracy--the exercise of political power by the working class majority. This is neither populism nor consent to be governed by enlightened rulers.

It may be more important that this alternative be recognized as a real possibility by a growing number of Americans, than that they decide they like a 'socialism' that has no more content than being 'something different.'

Gary Younge nails it in The Nation:

The problem [...] is that by concentrating on [who gets how much bailout money] so completely the focus shifted from the institutional to the individual, power to people, and in the process, from class struggle to class envy. The former targets the system that makes some people rich by making others poor; the latter is rooted in the popular resentment of the rich for their wealth. Envy can lead to struggle. But while the two may, in the right circumstances, be symbiotic, they are by no means synonymous.

ey

It's Larry Summers's World -- We Don't Live in It

Economic Adviser to the Aristocracy
by David Bromwich, Professor of Literature at Yale
Huffington Post
April 4, 2009

The lately published list of the honorariums received by Lawrence Summers for lectures delivered in 2008--at firms like J.P. Morgan, McKinsey and Company, Goldman Sachs (twice), Citigroup (twice), Lehman Brothers (twice), American Express, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Skagen Funds (twice)--shows the practical meaning of an aristocratic class. The amounts received by Summers from these banks and brokerage houses and consulting firms covered a range from $59,400 per lecture (Skagen) to $135,000 (McKinsey). Other outfits paid still more.

Summers also received a salary of $5.2 million in 2008 from the hedge fund D.E. Shaw after having brought substantial pressure to institute to a radical policy of deregulation that affords an unparalleled species of financial protection to hedge funds.

The point about such a private counselor who becomes a public servant is not that he is corrupt. He need not be. Rather, he is predictable within the world he knows and believes in, which is the world that honors him. He does not have to be told what to do. When he thinks of the American family, these banks and investment groups, and the too-big-to-fail insurance colossus, are in fact his extended family. They are the people he talks to and jokes with and eats with, the people he thinks of in his spare time. They are the people he knows.

One sees in the recent career of Summers--and not least, in his ascent to the position of economic adviser to President Obama--how subtle, consistent, and pervasive are the means by which an aristocracy perpetuates itself. How it doles out its rewards to maintain its power. How it buys the talents and shapes the careers it needs, so that even a general crisis brings only a second layer of bribed servants, and the medicine is administered by doctors whose judgment is bought and paid for. One sees, too, what drove the rage against such a class in earlier times--the feeling that its power is a monstrous imposition; the fear that no cry or protest will ever penetrate from outside the closed circle.

Got to Get Out of Afghanistan

Wrong on Afgahnistan!
by Bill Fletcher, Jr.

Sometimes I feel like I am reliving the era of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The era of “guns and butter,” as they called it. At the same time that Johnson was launching his “War on Poverty” he was escalating the US war against the people of Vietnam and Laos, as well as carrying out the criminal invasion of the Dominican Republic (1965). Not only did these interventions (and others!) isolate the USA and set back the efforts of these various countries at self-determination, but they wrecked the US economy, siphoning off badly needed resources.

So, here we are today with the Obama administration carrying out a cautious and VERY partial withdrawal from Iraq (50,000 US troops will remain), while at the same time escalating the US troop presence in Afghanistan. Compounding this situation are US military attacks within Pakistan, an activity that is the equivalent of pouring kerosene on an open fire.

And just like President Johnson, President Obama has an ambitious domestic agenda.

It has been difficult for many liberals and progressives to outright oppose the Afghanistan war. This was true when Bush first invaded in 2001, and it remains true today. Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, many people in the USA, including but not limited to the Bush administration, were looking for revenge. In fact, there were those who said quite explicitly that revenge should take precedence over justice. And so we got it…revenge that is.

The Afghanistan war was never a “good war.” Yes, Al Qaeda had bases in Afghanistan. So, let’s think about another situation and how it was handled. The Nicaraguan Contras, the US-backed terrorists who waged a war against the Sandinista government in the 1980s, were based in Honduras. The Honduran government did not control those bases, even if they turned a blind-eye to them. And, to emphasize the point, the Contras were supplied, resupplied, and further supplied by the US government. In fact, the USA mined Nicaraguan harbors, a clear act of war by one government against another.

So, should the Sandinistas have attacked Honduras, overthrown the Honduran government, and perhaps have attacked Miami for good measure? How do you think that much of the world would have responded? In fact, the Sandinistas went to the World Court and brought charges against the USA. The Nicaraguans prevailed in the Court, to the surprise of everyone, yet it did not matter because the USA ignored the judgment of the Court.

The Taliban government of Afghanistan, as despicable as they were, did not carry out the assault on 11 September 2001. It was easier, however, for Bush to carry out a conventional assault against the people that only a few short months prior they had been treating as potential business partners. In carrying out that invasion the US walked into a quagmire that anyone who studied Central Asia could have (and many had) predicted. In fact, the Soviet Union had a horrific experience in Afghanistan a dozen years earlier.

So, now we are being told that the USA must continue its “good war” in Afghanistan in order to crush the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The problem is that when something starts off wrong, it rarely gets much better. In fact, not only has the military situation been worsening due to a combination of bungling, corruption and cultural blindness by the invaders, but the regional political situation has been deteriorating. A popular movement in Pakistan brought an end to the military regime of President Musharaff. At the same time, right-wing Islamists began their own military actions against the Pakistan government, the US, Pakistani Shiites, and, when they had some free time, the Indian government. It should be noted that these are not the same Taliban as are operating in Afghanistan, but these distinctions never seem to matter to the USA. Each time the USA carries out a drone attack on alleged terrorist positions in Pakistan, they strengthen the arguments and support of the right-wing Islamists.

Further US involvement in Afghanistan brings no assurance of victory. More importantly, the conflict must be resolved politically. The puppet regime in Kabul has so alienated the population that they have little control outside of the city itself. The population which, in some cases welcomed the US invasion has turned against the US and their NATO and warlord allies even if they have no love for the Taliban. There is nothing that should lead anyone to believe that this will change with the introduction of even more US forces, even if the USA spreads money around the way that they did in Iraq in order to buy off opposition.

It is not just that furthering the Afghanistan aggression takes badly needed funds away from domestic projects in the USA. That should be a given. More importantly, the Afghanistan situation is integrally linked to the internal situation in Pakistan as well as the Pakistani conflict with India (over the Kashmir). There is little that the Obama administration is currently doing that seems to recognize the extent of the potential spillover affect from further military escalation. This in a region where there are two nuclear powers within minutes of turning each other into ashes, and seem to be driven toward this end.

BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum, and co-author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA.