NATO 5-23-2012

23, May 2012                            NATO

NATO has increasingly been used as a US surrogate and serves as a cover for United States military operations, to provide the false belief that there is a united front on all the wars we choose to fight. For example, Austria has only 3 troops in Afghanistan but is nonetheless considered a NATO partner.  NATO is an outmoded military alliance which regards all conflicts and disputes solvable by pounding away with its awesome US led ‘hammer’ power. We have witnessed the utter failure of this approach with our decade old war in Afghanistan. How can the Afghan forces degrade the Taliban resistance fighters with the planned withdrawal of NATO forces in 2014? The small remnant of troops will be extremely vulnerable to the Afghan army who have weak loyalties to the Karzai government and have repeatedly demonstrated their hostility to NATO forces. Furthermore, a Taliban surge is likely to emerge in 2014. The partial withdrawal is largely a political decision to pacify the war hawks and those on the political left. If  Europe is concerned about its enemies it should invest in its own defense and not drain the US currency on futile projects such as the ‘star wars’ missile defense shield in Poland which has unnecessarily provoked a Russian threat of retaliation.  NATO undermines the goal of the United Nations Charter, which seeks to resolve regional disputes non-violently. It is a Cold War relic and has lost any shred of legitimacy.

JP Morgan 5-16-2012

16, May 2012             JP Morgan

It is baffling to understand how JP Morgan CEO Mamie Dimon can still retain his lofty position after he admitted that he and other bank executives repeatedly ignored warnings of extremely risky trades. Doesn’t the buck stop at Dimon’s desk? It seems as Dimon’s moral outrage was a carefully crafted to blunt public criticism. It is also puzzling why President Obama would choose the occasion to remind us that Dimon “is the smartest banker we’ve got’. If that is true, we are in big trouble.

Surely this is a wakeup call for more stringent regulations to rein Wall Street banks who regard investors’ money as their pile of gambling chips. Gambling is a serious addiction and executives are encouraged to place risky bets because their huge bonuses are directly tied to their banks profits. These large, - too big to fail - banks have a huge competitive advantage and pose a systemic risk to taxpayers. Our lawmakers need to legislate ‘anti-trust’ laws to downsize these banks to prevent another financial debacle. Let is bring back Glass-Steagall to separate commerce and investment banking and apply the Volker Rule which mandates more transparency in derivative trading. It is disappointing that JP Morgan stockholders didn’t raise Caine and demand an end to these obscene bonuses. Finally, in the interests of full disclosure, President Obama should have admitted that JP Morgan had given him a nice juicy check of $1 million to aid his re-election.

Afghanistan 5-9-2012

9, May 2012                                Afghanistan

There is little to cheer with the announcement that US troops are planning to stay in Afghanistan until 2024. This is bad for the troops who are yearning to return home from a mission that has been so ill-defined. This is sure to alienate the Afghan people who are war weary of our presence, night raids and drone attacks. Just this week, an Afghan mother and her five children were mistakenly killed and another 14 civilians were killed in another incident in Badghis. A 2011 poll taken by the International Council on Security and Development revealed over 80% opposed the NATO war efforts and viewed them to be detrimental to the Afghan people.  Contrary to President Obama’s assertions, the war is going very badly. See Colonel Davis’ unclassified report in Rolling Stone magazine, entitled “Dereliction of Duty II”, which draws a strong parallel to H.R. Masters’ classic report of Vietnam.

President Obama’s highly publicized visit to Afghanistan may win a few votes at home but will have little outcome on the war itself. We should not be subjecting the people of Afghanistan and US troops as pawns in the high stakes of the US presidential election. How much more blood will be shed on a war without purpose and without end?