It was almost exactly ten years ago that President Bill Clinton was accused of "wagging the dog".  Two U.S. embassies in Africa, in Nairobi and in Dar Es Salaam were bombed and the attacks were quickly linked to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.  Clinton responded by launching cruise missile attacks against targets in Sudan and Afghanistan.

Of course, this was in the middle of the ludicrous so-called "scandal" about Monica Lewinsky and Clinton was accused of attempting to divert attention from that to a foreign crisis.  When the attacks apparently failed to take out terrorist targets, despite their having been recommended by military experts, the press was giddy with charges of "wag the dog".  There was even a movie that came out later entitled, if I recall correctly, "Wag the Dog".

So what's going on now?  The appearance of foreign crises that maybe are designed to help the GOP candidate.

The wing nut faction that functions as the Republican Party reached a nadir in foreign policy when President Bush announced that the United States will not undergo diplomatic talks of any kind with unfriendly nations.

So the GOP now sees fit to act like petulant, spoiled brats that refuse to acknowledge those they disagree with – kind of like their domestic policy now that you mentioned it. To put it simply, they have turned American foreign policy for the last 200 plus years on its head because they decided they won't talk to Iran, Syria, North Korea, or any other so-called "rogue" states.

How many of us, and of the MSM reporters and pundits, made note of the fact that Iraqi deaths and Iraqi refugees where not highlighted in the recent congressional hearings?

What does it say about the USA that we were grilling Petraeus about the heroic 4000 Americans who perished in this needless war and the trillions of US dollars being spent or about to be spent in Iraq, when there are Iraqi body counts that range from 90,300 at the most conservative end, to such horrific estimates as 1,197,000?

What does it say about us when we neglect to emphasize that our so called "pursuit to free Iraq" has in fact led to nearly 5 million Iraqi refugees inside and outside Iraq?

Do you ever tire of hearing me say: "you heard it here, first"?  Take the growing realization, across the board, that the plight of the US military ought to be a top issue in this election cycle.  That Democrats should reach out to the crewcut members of the horrible abused US Officer Corps... arguably the Bushites’ biggest victims.  Finally, a few liberals and moderates have started to take up this crisis -- the destruction of our Army and military readiness -- as a matter of simple patriotism.  (The REAL kind, not that flag-waving fakery.)  For a lengthy article relating the latest in this vital story, see "The US Military Breaking the Ranks." http://www.atimes.com/...

And yes, you heard it here first.  Find one person who raised this issue before I did, in 2004.

Only now, let’s talk about something else you are sure to hear more about.  But no earlier than here.  A growing phenomenon among "ostrich republicans" as they start, ever-so reluctantly, to waken from a torpor of denial.  

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The lesson that most Americans are learning now about foreign interventionism, I learned in 1999 in Kosovo. When I went there, I was full of ideas about helping people and saving the world, then realized that the reasons we went there were false, the people we aided should have been the enemy, and the whole mission was none of our business. We killed hundreds (or thousands) of people by bombing them, then got in there and watched the genocide that we were trying to prevent, except the Albanians were the ones doing the killing. People in third world countries want victory, not peace. They want to be the ones in charge, not create a democracy. That is what the US thinktanks and the ideologues on either side don't understand. They have such an ethnocentric worldview that they think that everyone's version of "freedom" is like ours. They think that everyone wants a government like ours. The truth is that many times they don't.

Many progressives here at the 'kos are praising Ron Paul's running for the RethugliKKKlan nomination.  It is quite a stark contrast for this "anti-war" candidate to run against nine other 'ThugliKKKlan candidates who are rabidly pro-war.

Giuliani had this confrontation with Paul at the Fox News debate:

Now, before we go praising Ron Paul for what seems to be a parroting of a progressive talking point in regards to Iraq and 9/11, it should be noted that Ron Paul is a vile, evil racist:

"If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be."

"Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e., support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action."

source: http://everything2.com/...

(This is the second part of my Globalization and Isolation series, which began with an overview of some of Nigeria's demographics, environmental, social and diplomatic challenges.)

What with the little Washington D.C. trial-bloodletting, and the not so surprising fact that combat vets have, and possibly always will be treated like shit in pretty much any society, who has time for you know, the global arms race?  Let's tune into Wolf Blitzer for 15 minutes of mindless hyperbole about some bearded Arab and then watch a commercial for hair loss treatment while the whole chain of consequences surrounding the U.S.'s eternal fight against Osaddamakhosseini (dirka dirka, we were always at war with Oceania) is crashing the party.

Both parties have led the American people into unjustified,or preventable wars,for no other reason than their own self-serving goals of wealth,and consolidation of power.

Sixty five years ago today,an unwilling America was dragged into war,it wanted no part of.A war that did not serve its own best interests,and led to some of the worst racial persecution in American history.

In his speech Tuesday to the American Legion convention in Salt Lake City, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that in America "many have still not learned history's lessons", saying that those who opposed or have come to belatedly oppose the Bush administration's stupid war in Iraq are appeasers who don't understand the imminent threat of "a new type of fascism". He invoked a quote as an example of the the kind of thinking he abhors. He didn't attribute the quote to anyone other than "one U.S. Senator" who -- upon hearing that Germany had invaded Poland in 1939 -- responded: "Lord, if only I could have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided."

But I've got a really big one. So, I'm here, confessing my big fat liberal sin. It's this:

I'm finding it very, very hard to give a crap about Darfur.

More on the flip.

Until the years after World War II, America has always seemed to be a reluctant player in foreign policy. Granted, there are exceptions - whether it be our rush to incite a war with Spain at the end of the 19th century, or Theodore Roosevelt's uncommon penchant for emphasizing our military might and declaring America to be the 'policeman' of the Western Hemisphere - but for the most part, our country has always had an isolationist streak about itself. A lot of that may stem from the formation of this country, when we threw the British and the German mercenaries known as Hessians out of the country (albeit with France's help). It may be best to recall that the country's first president under the current Constitution set the tone for a policy of non-intervention.

There will be an antiwar candidate in '08, probably Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold, and he'll get a lot of support and cause real problems for the front runner, whoever it is. Feingold won't be put on the ticket, but he could well throw the election to the Republicans if the Democrats don't figure out how to deal with the antiwar sentiment in the party.

There's a solution to this Rove trap: run to the right in rhetoric, and to the left in ideas.  It's not a mixed message:

Here's a quote from Peter Beirnart's book as provided by Kevin Drum, whose own attempt at thoughtful refutation of an obviously insulting and vaporous argument is, I fully admit, quite frankly a bit infuriating itself:

A November 2005 M.I.T. study...found that only 59 percent of Democrats -- as opposed to 94 percent of Republicans -- still approved of America's decision to invade Afghanistan. And only 57 percent of Democrats -- as opposed to 95 percent of Republicans -- supported using U.S. troops to "destroy a terrorist camp." George W. Bush, in other words, has used the war on terror to cover such a multitude of sins that for many liberals the whole idea of focusing the nation's energies on defeating global jihad (whether you call that effort the "war on terror" or something else) has fallen into disrepute. Just as Vietnam turned liberals against the cold war, Iraq has now turned them against the war on terror.

Ignoring whatever merits the book may or may not have, ignoring whatever merits Beinart and Drum themselves have, ignoring the entirety of the larger debate, the ongoing jackassery of this strawmanned liberal position is, at this point, almost a parlor game. And quite frankly, I'm long past done being polite in responding to it.

Now, let me say this again, knowing full well that it will be ignored again by every pundit, reporter and politican who duct taped George Bush, apple pie and themselves to the flag over the Iraq War: liberals are not opposed to the War on Terror. If anything, opposition to the Iraq War and to the transparently self-serving, hollow premises on which the war was predicated was based on a quite accurate understanding of the implications of those actions.

We are not against the war against international terrorism. We are infuriated by the Iraq War because of its obvious, predictable and catastrophic damage against the War on Terror.

Now, I've tried to make the argument before (see that above recent link), and in fact a great many people have made the same argument over the past few years, over and over, and it has amounted, in the minds of the supposedly expert and in-touch pundits of the world, to a hill of beans. Atrios makes it. Kos makes it. Nearly every blogger who has ever touched the issue makes it. It never gets a response; it never gets a passing reference; it never gets acknowledged.

And I'm sick of it, and I don't intend to let it pass by yet again.

I think that this Memorial Day Weekend it's a good idea to post a diary revisiting why this holiday was expanded to commemorate not just those who had fallen in the Civil War, but all wars. It's about the Industrial Revolution, the evolution of modern warfare, the rise of international movements, the failure of them at the expense of nationalism and isolationism, and the lessons for us.

More below...

NOTE: Previously diaried by quaoar; comments are set to read-only for this subsequent diary. Sorry for the confusion.

Bush will seek to allow a Dubai firm to operate 9 domestic U.S. military supply plants.  

WASHINGTON, April 27 -- President Bush is expected on Friday to announce his approval of a deal under which a Dubai-owned company would take control of nine plants in the United States that manufacture parts for American military vehicles and aircraft, say two administration officials familiar with the terms of the deal.

A Bush Alarm: Urging U.S. to Shun Isolationism
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, March 12 -- The president who made pre-emption and going it alone the watchwords of his first term is quietly turning in a new direction, warning at every opportunity of the dangers of turning the nation inward and isolationist, and making the case for international engagement on issues from national security to global economics.