Top Five Mentionworthies for 8/18/09

1. NY Times Editorial: The Climate and National Security

2. NY Times: Supreme Court Orders News Look at Death Row Case

3. NY Times: Obama Defends Strategy in Afghanistan

4. Salon.com: The Lanny Davis disease and America’s health care debate

5. NY Times: Mental Stress Training Is Planned for U.S. Soldiers

1. Today, the NY Times wrote an interesting piece on the angle the Obama Administration should take in passing meaningful climate change legislation.  Somehow, the fact that if meaningful legislation is not passed in the next year or two, it could have devastating effects on the future of the world, has not engendered potent legislation.  This, in of itself, is absurd.

The problem, when it comes to motivating politicians, is that the dangers from global warming — drought, famine, rising seas — appear to be decades off. But the only way to prevent them is with sacrifices in the here and now: with smaller cars, bigger investments in new energy sources, higher electricity bills that will inevitably result once we put a price on carbon.

Mainstream scientists warn that the longer the world waits, the sooner it will reach a tipping point beyond which even draconian measures may not be enough…That is why Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — no alarmist — has warned that “what we do in the next two or three years will determine our future.” And he said that two years ago.

Yet, this is not enough for Congress to pass anything worthy of our tax-dollars.  What do we get instead?  Cap-and-Trade and Cash-for-Clunkers, both of which are half-assed, weak attempts at solving the quagmire that look good to politicians’ constituencies, but in reality, do very little to curb the problem.

So, in the end, it may come down to making climate change a national security issue, because, as we all know, people will always be motivated by fear and possible endangerment of their personal safety, hence WMD, Saddam Hussein, the justification for torture and waterboarding, and on and on and on.  Fear-mongering will always win the day in politics, so if that’s the angle it takes to alarm people of the necessity to pass potent climate change legislation, then I suppose it’s better than doing nothing at all about the issue.  It’s a sad-but-true tale:  fear, and not the actual public interest, may again have to win the day.

3. It behooves me that Obama continues to trumpet that Afghanistan is the “good war”, or the one worth fighting.  The nerve he has to state, “We must never forget, this is not a war of choice.  This is a war of necessity.  Those who attacked American on 9/11 are plotting to do so again.  If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.  So this is not only a war worth fighting.  This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

I just don’t get it:  of course this was a war of choice!  How can a Global War on Terrorism against a Global Terrorist network in Al-Qaeda be pinned down to one or two SOVEREIGN nations, in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Those who attacked us on 9/11 were predominately from Saudi Arabia!  Obama CHOSE to increase troop-levels in Afghanistan.  What’s left to accomplish there?  How in the world can we ever win the war?  What counts as victory?  When the Taliban no longer exists?  Us being there continues to motivate Radical Muslims to come to Afghanistan, commit Jihad, and fight what they consider a Holy War.  It is a battle we cannot possibly win because they will continue to fight perpetually.  For Obama to state that this is a war of necessity is both deceiving and dangerous.

The soundbite:  “This is a war of choice.  This is a war of necessity” will be shown over and over again on the mainstream news media, and by the majority of the American public, his words will be treated as gospel.  In the meantime, our troops continue to die and come home seriously wounded and by no means are we “winning” this war.  But, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter:  bill after bill, Congress continues to fund the war efforts.  Better to stay mum on the issue and not risk being called unpatriotic and risk not being re-elected than to actually do what’s right for our country and speak out against a senseless war, right?

4. Greenwald again does a great job in revealing the mainstream media’s skeletons in their closets.  In what is becoming more and more common, Cable and Network TV News are using sources with extreme conflicts-of-interests and displaying them as “independent” analysts.  The very fact that cable networks are profit-motivated, rather than public interest-motivated, should cause suspicion in anyone consuming news from these channels.  The bottom line is that cable network news, other than Rachel Maddow’s show, hosted by a woman with a background in nonprofit, public radio, is not worth watching, as it is infested with corporate money and secret agendas, all of which mislead the public.  Journalism is all about revealing the truth in the name of the public interest and in holding those in power accountable, not about hiding the truth in the name of making money and working as a PR machine for those in power.  With the direction the journalism industry is headed in, though, it looks like real, hard-hitting journalism will become more and more a thing of the past, and journalism as a forum for public manipulation of policy debate will become more and more commonplace.

5. The NYT ran a story today about a new ARMY program that attempts to tackle problems like soldiers affected by disorders like PTSD before their onset.  While surely a good PR move by them, the bottom line is that it is pointless.  They are fighting in purposeless wars and seeing horrible atrocities on a daily-basis, so of course, PTSD, depression, and alcoholism will be take place.    It’s not about being “emotionally resilient”.  Imagine having images in your head of shooting a family full of innocent civilians in the midst of a war with no overall purpose or direction.  It’s not about being “mentally tough”.  People should not have to go through these types of scenarios in their lives.  War should always be the last option, but these men, many of whom probably joined the ARMY for noble reasons, have been hung to dry, sent to the killing-fields of Afghanistan to be slaughtered by the Taliban.  No “resiliency training” can halt the onset of PTSD when the war in which the soldiers are fighting is barbaric and downright un-winnable.

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