You all recall Angelo Codevilla's outstanding
take-down of the Ruling Class.
He has more--this time, with regards its
foreign adventurism.
...
U.S. policy has made things worse because the liberal internationalists, realists, and neoconservatives who make up America's foreign policy Establishment have all assumed that Americans should undertake the impossible task of changing such basic facts, rather than confining themselves to the difficult but vital work of guarding U.S. interests against them. For the Establishment, 9/11 meant opportunities to press for doing more of what they had always tried to do.
At home, the American people are less free, less prosperous, more bitterly divided, and much less hopeful in 2011 than in 2001 because a decade of the War on Terror brought a government ever bigger and more burdensome, as well as "security" measures that impede the innocent rather than focusing on wrongdoers. Our ruling class justified its ever-larger role in America's domestic life by redefining war as a never-ending struggle against unspecified enemies for abstract objectives, and by asserting expertise far above that of ordinary Americans. After 9/11, far from deliberating on the best course to take, our rulers stayed on autopilot and hit the throttles.
And the "change" from Obama? Direct orders for assassinations, not just 'spray and pray.'
...
This transformation in the structure and mission of our armed forces in the War on Terror was supposed to increase our influence in the world. Instead, our ruling class's penchant for treating its wishes about what foreign realities should be as accurate perceptions of what they are has often made bad situations worse. Immediately after 9/11 the Bush Administration gratuitously assumed that all the world's governments were aghast at what had been done to America, and would cooperate in eradicating terrorism. At least some might have, if we had proved ourselves fearsome abroad and stout at home. Instead, the U.S. government became more pliant than ever in its foreign dealings, while at home it went on a spending binge that indebted it to the rest of the world. Disrespect has been a natural consequence.
Codevilla cites Russia, the ChiComs, and Iran pertaining to the above graf.
About the "Arab Spring," (the monicker Codevilla calls 'silliness':)
Silliness hides what ought to be the basic distinction in international affairs: between regimes antagonistic to American interests and those that respect those interests. It hides the question of what opportunities any situation might offer for advancing those interests. Thus, our ruling class helped overthrow Egypt's regime despite its 30-year alliance with us, but did nothing to overthrow Syria's, whose 40-year record of opposition to America includes using the terrorist group Hezbollah to kill Americans. Nor did our rulers imagine that they could exact prices from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikdoms for U.S. forbearance in the face of their troubles. And when Libya's regime was faced with armed insurrection, our rulers eschewed both a swift coup de grace and dignified quiet. Instead, our ruling class, joined by Europe's, mounted an indecisive military campaign that, whatever else it did, earned contempt for its authors. We can gauge that contempt by noting the new Libyan authorities' refusal to extradite Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the convicted perpetrator of the 1989 Lockerbie bombing.
Then there are the internal consequences: Big Sister Napolitano. Codevilla accurately blames Tricky Dick (remember Jerris Leonard??) for the embryo which has now grown to the Jolly Green Giant.
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this official blindness meant that thenceforth the U.S. government would consider any ordinary American to be as likely a perpetrator of terrorism as any actual terrorist or terrorist government. The pretense of value-free, politically neutral security proved to be catnip for politicians eager to evade responsibility. Businesses supported the policy because doing so meant they would be paid for providing the screening equipment to treat millions of Americans as potential hijackers or suicide bombers. For people looking for easy jobs, homeland security was a bonanza.
Has homeland security prevented something like another 9/11? No. In fact, no one has tried anything of the sort. Had they done so, nothing homeland security has put in place would have stopped them. We do not know of any operation planned and manned by professionals, as 9/11 was, that has been stopped. We do know that American society has countless inherent vulnerabilities to terrorism, which no one has taken even a little trouble to exploit. Nothing could ever stop ten people in ten states from throwing flaming gasoline bottles into ten school buses simultaneously, thus shutting down the U.S. school system. But no one has done it. Homeland security created closely packed lines of people in front of airport security checkpoints—the perfect target for explosive-laden carry-on luggage. But no one has attempted that, either, nor committed any of the other outrages so obviously feasible and requiring so little skill and organization. We don't know why not. In short, homeland security has proven irrelevant to terrorism.
But not to another massive Gummint jobs-program!
And, finally, we have the foundational problem.
The War on Terror has moved American politics and institutions further away from mutual persuasion toward antagonistic assertions of prerogative. Wars for hazy ends prosecuted without clear declaration of purpose did not begin in 2001. But never before were enemies designated by intelligence agencies, which declined to make public the bases for their judgments. Between 2001 and 2007 a bitter debate between the CIA and the Defense Department (backed by Vice President Dick Cheney's office) bubbled to the surface over Iraq's role in 9/11, and terrorism in general. The debate, which really was about whether and on whom we should make war, was settled intramurally by bureaucrats who used sympathetic journalists to discredit their opponents while foreclosing rebuttal. "Security of classified information" in wartime is the official reason why our ruling class thus cut Congress (and the American people) out of decisions on this and other vital matters. By the same logic, the CIA announced in 2010 that the president and his advisers had concluded that one Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen in Yemen, was so involved in terrorism that American forces would hunt him down and kill him. Of what capital crime was he accused? By whom? Who convicted and sentenced him? The experts. On the basis of what evidence? Sorry, can't say. Classified. Wartime necessity, you know
Many 'conservatives' play into the hands of the Ruling Class with their supine agreement with anydamnthingatall the Gummint wants to do--and wants us to pay for, (and send our children, by the way, thankyouverymuch.)
This is not the way to run a representative republic. It is, however, a good way to fuel a TEA Party-styled rebellion.
