…since I harshed your mellow. Chris Floyd steps up to do the job:

Indeed, the entire arc of America’s bipartisan policies in [Central Asia] over the past 40 years can be seen as the elaborate construction of a gargantuan, self-propelled blowback machine, producing an endless effluent of violence, threat, chaos and crime that is now sluicing through the entire world. But blowback, as we all know, is not a design flaw of imperial policy, at least not for the most part; it is a design feature. No War Machine without perpetual war and rumors of war; no war profits – and no war powers – without the War Machine.

He’s talking about Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledging an escalation of their countries’ military commitments to Afghanistan. Executive summary: more death and misery for the people there, more profit and power for a very select group of people here.

IRAQ WAR ENDS and other great headlines in today’s (fake) New York Times (courtesy of The Yes Men).

Good.is has a snappy video breaking down the $3 Trillion cost of war (as documented in Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilme’s exhaustively researched book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict)

Bush administration officials have shown a determination to operate under an expansive definition of self-defense that provides a legal rationale for strikes on militant targets in sovereign nations without those countries’ consent.

That’s from deep within an article that details how President Bush signed a secret order back in 2004 allowing the U. S. military to engage in hostile operations in countries that we’re not at war with.

Um… sweet!

Juan Cole is an American expert on Middle Eastern and Central Asian affairs. In addition to writing a regular blog and column for Salon.com, he’s also the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan.

He has an excellent post up today looking at Pakistani military activity in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. He notes that, on the one hand, American politicians speak of vital American security interests which are imperiled by Taliban activity in these areas; on the other hand, ongoing fighting in that area is barely making a ripple in the US media.

In his post, he questions whether the US truly has a compelling national security interest in what’s happening in this part of the world:

Although both candidates tie the resurgence of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan to US domestic security, I personally have difficulty understanding exactly how that works. The September 11, 2001, attacks on the US were planned by Arab expatriates in Hamburg, Germany, and Pushtun tribespeople had almost nothing to do with them (did the Taliban even know what Bin Laden was planning?)

Both McCain and Obama have adopted Bushspeak on this issue, allowing W. and Cheney to frame the national debate into the next four years. Bushspeak works by contiguity, by things being next to one another, rather than by causality. Al-Qaeda was in Khost, which was controlled by the Taliban, so ipso facto the Taliban are related to 9/11, and since the Taliban were largely Pushtuns, the Pushtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan are, whenever they rebel against their local government, a dire threat to the US mainland. There are roughly 28 million Pushtuns in northwest Pakistan, and 12 million in Afghanistan. The ones in Pakistan recently rejected the fundamentalist parties for the most part in favor of a secular-leaning Pushtun nationalist party. Many of the ones in Afghanistan are part of, or back, the Karzai government. In my view, tying US national security to Pushtun local politics is magical thinking. The stability of Afghanistan and Pakistan are important, but framing that stability in the terms of a “war on terror[ism]” ignores the dynamics of secular and religious forms of Pushtun national self-assertion.

Like most things in this political season, it’s been disappointing to see progressives get excited about Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama. Most recently known for his “sales job” at the UN that brought death and destruction to millions of Iraqi civilians, Powell was also deeply involved in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980’s, and, as far back as 1968, was busy covering up the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

Robert Parry published an excerpt of his book Neck Deep that delves into the background of General Powell. It’s worth a read.

I found this post in the comments section of an ABC News Political Radar posting about Joe Biden speaking in Seattle. It’s instructive to me to read what some Americans “think” is going on in the world:

IRAQ is won, NATO is in Afghanistan (not just the US), no terrorism on US soil since 9/11, Financial crisis caused by Democrats and Socialist policy now fixed by bipartisan effort, my business has gone from $5M in 2002 to $92M in 2008, 401K invested in government bonds so no loss at all. From my perspective, Obama can only make a mess of things.

My favorite part is “no terrorism on US soil since 9/11.” The fact that the Republicans presided over the worst terrorist attack against the US in modern times is a benefit to them? Nice.

Phillip Toledano’s installation America: The Gift Shop is definitely worth an on-line browse. Chilling and funny at the same time. (Pictured above is the Abu Ghraib Coffee Table.)

Joeseph Nye has a scary warning in yesterday’s Financial Times, about why bin Laden might want to help the GOP candidates this October and November:

On October 29 2004, four days before the last election, Al Jazeera aired an 18 minute video tape in which Osama bin Laden addressed the American people and threatened further retaliation and a desire to bankrupt the US. In the first poll after that tape was released, President George W. Bush opened up a six point lead over Senator John Kerry. The deputy director of the CIA commented that “Bin Laden certainly did a nice favour today for the president”.

Since the election turned on 120,000 votes in Ohio, it is plausible Mr bin Laden was able to affect the election. From the al-Qaeda leader’s point of view, Mr Bush’s policies were more useful for his efforts to recruit supporters than Mr Kerry’s might have been. Mr bin Laden is involved in a civil war within Islam. He wants the US to pursue policies that create the appearance of a clash of civilisations. Anything that polarises the mainstream of Muslim opinion helps his recruiting. As the deputy director for analysis at the CIA commented at the time: “Certainly, he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years.”

From that point of view, Barack Obama must be unsettling for Mr bin Laden. An African-American with a father born in Kenya and a childhood spent partly in Indonesia presents a very different face to the world. A recent BBC poll of 22 countries found that if the world could vote, Mr Obama would win in a landslide. The pro-Obama margin varied from 82 percentage points in Kenya to 9 points in India.

From the always-inspiring publication Defense Systems:

Homeland Security Strategies, of New Rochelle, N.Y., will offer facial-recognition technology for its Icarus Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Platform. Originally designed to detect roadside bombs and landmines, Icarus can now perform tasks such as aerial observation and countermeasures against improvised explosive devices, buried-object detection, facial recognition, and laser targeting of hostile personnel.

Totally awesome! And definitely a great marketing strategy to name your flying machine after the mythical figure whose hubris led him to flaunt his limits and self-destruct! Genius!!

More detail, from the manufacturer’s sales page:

The Icarus Microdrone is able to hover over an area under surveillance with near silent lift propulsion. This enables the remotely operated aerial vehicle to function in urban environments without alerting those under surveillance to its presence.

Keep an eye on the sky!