Michael Steele's comments on Afghanistan remind me of my favorite definition of a gaffe: "saying the truth in the worst way possible."

To wit, Steele said that Afghanistan is a war of Obama's choosing, and that everyone who's occupied Afghanistan has come to grief over it. Now one can quibble a bit over the details of who came to grief and who didn't, but basically he's right. Afghanistan went badly for the Russians and the British, most recently. There's a reason Afghanistan is called the "graveyard of Empires" and if the US isn't careful it'll be the graveyard of the US empire.

Likewise, yes, this is a war of choice for Obama. He could have done his review, said, "Hey, there are almost no al-Q'aeda fighters in Afghanistan anymore, so we won, let's go home." He could have said, "Fighting in Afghanistan is seriously destabilizing Pakistan, which is far more important than Afghanistan, so let's go home." He could have said, "Yes, if we leave, some al-Q'aeda camps might spring up but we can always bomb them and anyway there are plenty of failed states where al-Q'aeda can set up camps and we can't occupy all of them."

The point is that continuing in Afghanistan was a choice. Obama could have chosen otherwise. Not being in Afghanistan will not create an existential threat to the US.

So yeah, Steele was right. Of course, being the RNC chairman, Steele isn't allowed to say things that make sense and contradict Republican warmongering.

Now here's a truth that Steele didn't tell. Obama has to stay in Afghanistan because war spending is one of the only reliable forms of stimulus he has. The economy is in bad shape, and it needs that stimulus. Since he can't get a new large stimulus through Congress that means he MUST keep the Afghan war going if he doesn't want an economic disaster, which would then lead to an electoral disaster.

This is the sad truth of America: the only acceptable form of Keynesian spending is military Keynesianism. Instead of hiring tens of thousands of teachers, building a high speed rail network across the country, refitting every building to be energy efficient and doing a massive solar and wind build-out to reduce dependence on oil, well, the US would rather turn Afghans and Pakistanis into a fine red mist.

That fine red mist is what's keeping the American economy from going under entirely. And so, even if it's the wrong thing to do, even if it's the graveyard of America's Empire, the war will continue.

Bill Gertz And The Sword Of Darkness Where in Washington, D.C. is Sun Myung Moon? National security reporter Bill Gertz has been described by employer Reverend Moon as an agent of prophecy.

Bill Gertz, Washington Times reporter and devout member of the Unification Church, has recently drawn an awful lot of attention for stories no one but the Times will print: stories about Chechen terrorists sneaking across the Rio Grande, Russians pilfering the missing Iraqi explosives, and other marvels. Says Joshua Marshall: "You can't make this stuff up. Or, I guess, actually you can."

From Paul Hinrichs at The Aristocrats:

Hey! - Let's all stick corncobs up our butts and march around the White House, stiff-legged, butt stuck way up in the air, white as can be, with signs that say "9/13 - yo' mama!" and "Where is Reagan's Death Certificate?" We'll call ourselves the "cornholers" and we're gonna take back America from the Russians who crossed the Bering Straits while Palin was out signing books.

Open thread below... And happy birthday to our Video Cafe maven, Heather!

Even some of the denizens of the far Right are beginning to work out that the Russians aren't afraid of their bark and may just bite back in return. Witness manly man Mark Hemingway writing at The Corner on NRO:

(T)his should be a big story:

Russia has informed Norway that it plans to suspend all military ties with NATO, Norway's Defense Ministry said Wednesday, a day after the military alliance urged Moscow to withdraw its forces from Georgia.

... the NATO-Russia Council which has been active and productive for a number of years now. Russia severing ties with NATO is a significant step, and not necessarily for the better.

No, really? Could you explain it to the White House, where Bush is still trying to bluff on a busted flush? Today he told Russia they must leave Georgia "now" and the Russians basically replied "Gonna make us? You and which army?" And then there's this:

It was unclear if there would be any impact on a crucial aspect of NATO-Russian cooperation: the deal under which Moscow allows aircraft supplying the NATO-led force in Afghanistan to fly through Russian airspace.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was "not going to shut the doors" on cooperation with NATO, but he pointedly raised the issue of Afghanistan transit.

"After the famous NATO meeting (when the alliance froze contacts with Russia), some leading alliance officials were whispering in my ears: 'You are not going to halt the Afghanistan transit, are you?,"' he said.

As I say, busted flush.

Natasha Chart at Open Left:

Glenn Hurowitz recently wondered who's going to help Tibet bring down China, like the Russians were brought down in Afghanistan and the British in India.

International pressure and protest seems to carry no weight among the Chinese. Their government is still arresting monks for "unauthorized gatherings", they're still shooting and killing Tibetans. They've also been shipping weapons to Zimbabwe's dictator, who's currently ignoring the results of an election that voted him and his party out of power. They buy 90 percent of Sudan's exported oil, and sells them small arms destined for Darfur. Darfur, where the Sudanese government is carrying out air attacks against helpless civilian targets. Oh yes, and they're now the world's top carbon polluter, though the US still remains the top carbon polluter per capita.

Yeah, that Chinese government, complete jerks, tyrants, to put it charitably. People are surprised that the Olympic torch protests seem only to have stirred Chinese nationalism, surprised that the Chinese don't understand why people are angry. Still, I think Glenn asks the wrong question. Because who is it that raised China up? The lack of self-awareness in this situation isn't exclusive to the Chinese, people everywhere have an amazing capacity to accept almost anything as normal.

Indeed, let's cut right to the heart of the matter: whom else will we buy our shoes from?

I looked this up once when I was working at my community college paper in 2005. There was an editorial insistence on doing a fashion insert, so I contributed something about sweatshops and the offshoring of clothing manufacture. (I know, total killjoy.) I found a copy of that article in my old files, and according to the research that I'd done at the time, the US had lost over 860,000 textile and apparel jobs since 1993, and China was making 80% of the world's shoes.

Sure, if you have (usually) more money to spend, you can find shoes made somewhere else. But not everyone has that kind of time or latitude. Funny thing, though, now shoe manufacturers are closing down in China. Now that "many factories have to meet social obligations" and workers have been agitating for better pay, manufacturing jobs are slowly starting to leave China as they once left the US. Read on...

The Moderate Voice thinks the death of the immigration bill spells the end of Bush's power and the monolithic Rove GOP machine.

Shadow of The Hegemon's Demosthenes on why Dick Cheney stinks like thousands of dead fish.

LastLeftB4Hooterville- "Why is Republican, partisan-owned proprietary software being used for public elections?"

Over at The Arms Control Wonk, they have an update on the My Plan, Your Plan poker game over US missile defense sites in Europe. The Russians are saying Bush has until Putin reaches Kennebunkport to make his mind up.

Zeno at Halfway There gets an invite to contribute to Bush's birthday present (and changes some links to protect

the innocent).

This is the last guest round-up by Cernig @ The Newshoggers. Thanks to everyone at C&L for making me feel so welcome. Simbaud from King of Zembla will be here all next week. Try the veal.

John Amato: Thanks so much Cernig for your help. MBR is an important part of C&L.

CNN:

Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin has died at the age of 76, a Kremlin spokesman confirmed Monday.

Kremlin spokesman Alexander Smirnov confirmed Yeltsin's death, but gave no further details.[..]

He became the first democratically elected president of Russia in 1991 and two months later put down a coup attempt against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

One of the images most associated with Yeltsin is that of him sitting on a tank during the raucous street rallies that marked the coup attempt.

"I think that is the image that he would like people to have forever," former Yeltsin adviser Alexander Nekrassov told CNN Monday.

But just two years later, he ordered tanks to storm the Russian White House to oust barricaded deputies who dug in after Yeltsin dissolved parliament, accusing it of blocking reforms.

"He has trampled on democracy," said Gorbachev in a later interview. "The first freely elected elected parliament in Russia in 1,000 years and he fires on it with tanks!"

Yeltsin was both loved and hated by fellow Russians, said Matthew Chance, CNN's senior international correspondent in Moscow.

Look, when self-described "Reagan Conservatives" are doing it, I think Godwin's Law no longer applies.

Raw Story (h/t DLBB)

An economist who once served as President Reagan's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury compares President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler in a column at the libertarian website Anti-war.com.

"Bush is like Hitler," Paul Craig Roberts writes in a column entitled The Surge: Political Cover or Escalation?. "He blames defeats on his military commanders, not on his own insane policy."

"Like Hitler, he protects himself from reality with delusion," Roberts continues. "In his last hours, Hitler was ordering non-existent German armies to drive the Russians from Berlin."

Richard Ben-Veniste on Bush: "Trust but verify."
With Bush admitting to be the "Leaker in Chief," Ben-Veniste was on Hardball today, and called him the "boy who cried wolf," on his credibility. He also used the old Ronald Reagan line describing the Russians to accurately paint him-"trust but verify."
Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

Ben-Veniste: ...to use President Reagan's admonition in dealing with the Russians-"trust but verify."

Matthews: Treat this administration that way?

Ben-Veniste: I'm sorry to say that's the case and it's a sad state of affairs. On important, critical matters-ahh the President is now been show not to be accurate and now hypocritical in terms of this leak investigation-the political fallout is huge in my view.

Bush finally got the Reagan comparison he and his followers have been looking for.

Update:( I'll be going on with The Young Turks at 4:30 PST to do "The Eggregious clip of the Week")

The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.---- The former president of the U.S. Family Network said Buckham told him that Russians contributed $1 million to the group in 1998 specifically to influence DeLay's vote on legislation the International Monetary Fund needed to finance a bailout of the collapsing Russian economy...read on"

Jane has a new treatment on the film ready to go.