There are some startling and very troublesome allegations in the two reports below, forwarded in an email from Chuck Spinney.
These reports certainly fit the picture of a nation bouncing between alternating, "Stolen Narratives," continuously fed to a divided and conquered electorate. That's no way to run a Democracy. We can do better.
As Chuck Spinney (below) and others repeatedly note, both sides in the ideology wars leave outrageous national returns on the table, untouched, based on their fear and loathing of each other's positions. The left's & right's inability to pursue the additional, compounding return on coordination (as we did during WWII) is eroding and wasting most of the potential of the USA (and other countries too). If these opposing sets of obsessive, compulsive ideologues would just work honestly together, all would benefit, by more than either can currently imagine.
The only thing we have to fear, is fear of coordination?
At the end of the day, you have to ask the following questions. What part of Democracy and teamwork does our current electorate NOT understand? And why don't they? We should NOT be stocking our policy offices with these kinds of actors. We are better than this. Far better.
No democracy can succeed by pursuing an absolutist fight to determine whether two random, arbitrary, and opposing views are right or wrong. In a changing world, they both are, always. It's only a matter of time. Survival lies only in cooperatively exploring all emerging options, and discovering what no one could expect or predict. If the unexpected is discovered sooner rather than later, the net returns are unimaginable. That's easy, if we just let it happen.
To counterbalance the current view of the GOP-only as synonymous with the MICC, I've also listed links to 2 critical reviews of the Carter & Clinton administrations, indicating two equal but different flaws in what can, again, be described as over-simplistic, stolen narratives, this time from the Democratic Party (either dealing naively with the MICC or Wall St. - a FICC* - or in turn, being captured by them).
We could go all the way back to LBJ and Vietnam, or Eisenhower as the first to warn against an overly influential MICC. However, instead of choosing sides in a pointless, political civil war, let's move on to something better, by abandoning the 2-gang, .. er .. "party" political system. The 2-party approach to contingency management is an obvious failure. Instead of a 2-channel approach to public discourse, we need faster/better/leaner ways to use all available channels.
Roger Erickson, Jan, 2014
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Chuck Spinney (email commentary quoted here) speaks with considerable authority on DoD policy issues. [Jan 11, 2014]
"Gareth Porter and Robert Parry, two of our finest investigating reporter/historians deserve kudos for placing the self-serving nature of the [recent] Gates' memoir in a proper perspective.
Readers should bear in mind that the soap-opera-like gaming of Obama into acquiescing to the fatally flawed plan for a surge in Afghanistan surge in 2009, described accurately by Porter and Parry below, was clearly obvious well before Obama made his decision to cave into the pressure exerted by Gates, Clinton, and the Generals and their neo-con allies in Congress.
To be sure, Obama was also feebly playing the game by leaking differences of opinion to the press -- but his was an amateurish operation by an inexperienced malleable politician and his pissant staffers. Those on the other side were pros in manipulating the wholly owned subsidiaries in the press. Predictably, as explained [in the articles listed] below, the brass hats won in 2009, notwithstanding a well publicized last ditch effort to stop the madness executed by Ambassador (and former General) Karl Eikenberry.
Now, with the publication of his memoir, Gates is attempting to administer the coup the de grace on the dawn of a mid-term election -- which shaping to be a bad one for a hapless President and the Democrats ... and this is just an opening shot. Benjamin Netanyahu, with the help of many Democrats as well as Republicans, has another exceeding dangerous caper waiting in the wings (more on that later)."
Herewith are Porter's and Parry's reports.
Gates Conceals Real Story of ‘Gaming’ Obama on Afghan War
Robert Gates Double-Crosses Obama
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And here are counterpoint reports, lest anyone think we're following anything other than ping pong policy narratives.
The Trusteeship Presidency: Jimmy Carter and the United States Congress
The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street
A Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama's Promise, Wall Street's Power, and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future
* FICC, Financial, Industrial, Congressional Complex
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