When I was writing my book on the history of American political debate and change - The Progressive Revolution: How The Best In America Came To Be - in 2008, I was doing some research on the sequence of events in the 1960s, I was struck by the fact that so many big things happened so close together. As I wrote in my book:

"The civil rights movement inspired other progressives not only to help in the civil rights cause but also to come together around a range of other issues and constituencies. A renewed wave of feminism was sparked in great part by Betty Friedan's influential book The Feminine Mystique. The environmental movement gained broad public appeal when Rachel Carson's Silent Spring became a best seller. Students began to organize themselves. The Port Huron statement, written by Tom Hayden and others, prompted young people to get involved in politics through the student and antiwar movements. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was founded. Cesar Chavez used many of King's organizing tactics, as well as new ones of his own, to unionize farm workers in the agricultural fields of California. And as the 1960s wore on, progressives of all stripes looked with growing concern at the Vietnam War and began to protest in earnest against it.

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I don't think the situation could get much more dire, and yet the Senate millionaires prefer to act as if this brutal recession is no big deal. I just don't get their indifference to human suffering:

WASHINGTON -- In a take-it-or-leave-it gesture, the Senate voted Thursday night to reject more than $20 billion in domestic spending the House had tacked on to its $60 billion bill to fund President Barack Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan.

Instead, the Senate returned to the House a measure limited chiefly to war funding, foreign aid, medical care for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange, and replenishing almost empty disaster aid accounts.

The moves repel a long-shot bid by House Democrats earlier this month to resurrect their faltering jobs agenda with $10 billion in grants to school districts to avoid teacher layoffs, $5 billion for Pell Grants to low-income college students, $1 billion for a summer jobs program and $700 million to improve security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The House bill fell prey to a 46-51 tally that fell short of a simple majority, much less the 60 votes required to defeat a filibuster. The Senate is instead insisting on its almost $60 billion version of the measure, passed on a bipartisan vote in May.

Eleven Democrats and Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut voted against the House measure. Not a single Republican supported it.

Frankly, I refuse to call this a "war". This is and always has been an occupation. Terminology aside, this is not exactly something worth celebrating, but I do think it's time to re-think Afghanistan:

Three months after 9/11, every major Taliban city in Afghanistan had fallen — first Mazar-i-Sharif, then Kabul, finally Kandahar. Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar were on the run. It looked as if the war was over, and the Americans and their Afghan allies had won.

Butch Ivie, then a school administrator in Winfield, Ala., remembers, "We thought we'd soon have it tied up in a neat little bag."

But bin Laden and Omar eluded capture. The Taliban regrouped. Today, Kandahar again is up for grabs. And soon, Afghanistan will pass Vietnam as America's longest war.

The Vietnam War's length can be measured in many ways. The formal beginning of U.S. involvement often is dated to Aug. 7, 1964, when Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, giving the president a virtual carte blanche to wage war. By the time the last U.S. ground combat troops were withdrawn in March 1973, the war had lasted 103 months.

U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001. On June 7, the war will complete its 104th month. President Obama on Thursday reaffirmed his commitment to the war, saying "it is absolutely critical that we dismantle that network of extremists that are willing to attack us."

This longest war is far from America's bloodiest. It has drifted in and out of focus and, for much of its life, been obscured by another war, in Iraq.

I guess we should be grateful for small favors in that relative to other battles, there's been less loss of life, although I'd say it's still 1,800 lives too many.

Former Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke on This Week last week to say that even with the troop increase in Afghanistan, "victory" (however you define that) ultimately was in the hands of the Afghans.

If that's the case, one has to ask why the hell we need to be there for anyway.

BraveNewFilm's ReThink Afghanistan is fundraising to purchase an ad in the Politico (because you know they all read it) asking Congress and the President to pull the troops by December 2011. If you're able, please consider donating to inject some sense into this debate.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) shows the kind of spirit and initiative required to drum some sense into the debate about how long President Obama intends to keep our troops in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, there aren't many Democratic politicians willing to stand with him in an election year. Listen to what he says - he's not anti-war, he understands the need for a military and that there is a time and place to use military force. But spending our soldiers' blood and our nation's treasure against unclear objectives and without clear progress toward achievable objectives just isn't wise.

As the war in Afghanistan surpasses the Vietnam war in length and cost, maybe the Dems will find their courage after the mid-terms.

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From CNN:

(CNN) -- Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a longtime fixture on the House subcommittee that oversees Pentagon spending, has died following complications from gallbladder surgery, according to his office. He was 77.

The veteran Democratic congressman recently underwent scheduled laparoscopic surgery to remove his gallbladder.

Murtha was hospitalized in December and had to postpone a hearing with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the administration's strategy in Afghanistan. The congressman returned to work after a few days in the hospital and helped oversee final passage of the 2010 defense appropriations bill.

Murtha represented Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district in the House since 1974, making him the chamber's eighth most senior member. According to his biography on the House Web site, Murtha was the first Vietnam War combat veteran elected to Congress.

He was considered one of "the kings of pork" on Capitol Hill by taxpayer watchdog groups for requesting tens of millions of dollars in earmarks.

On his House Web site, Murtha strongly defended earmarks, saying, "I believe that elected representatives of the people understand their constituents and districts best." Supporters said his efforts have helped bring thousands of jobs to western Pennsylvania.

Other controversies dogged Murtha's career. Critics alleged he steered Pentagon contracts to businesses that hired his brother as a lobbyist, but Murtha insisted his brother was treated like everyone else.

The Fox anchors were restrained this morning in announcing the news. The right wingers have had Murtha in their sights for a long time. So you can count on the "opinion" crew to be licking its chops over the prospects of a Republican taking Murtha's seat this fall. Start your stopwatches.

(UPDATE: John Amato will be appearing on the Randi Rhodes Show at 1:35 pm PST to talk about this and other topics)

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(h/ Heather)

Tom Tancredo stormed off the set of the Ed Show when he was debating health care with Markos Moulitsas. Poor baby.

It all started when Tancredo started trash-talking the Veterans Administration, at which point Markos brought up his chickenhawk past. He got angry and tried the standard conservative whine, realized he was better quitting while he was behind, and then stormed off. The truth hurts, right Tom?

As a Republican student activist, Tancredo spoke out in favor of the Vietnam War. After graduating from the University of Northern Colorado in June 1969, he became eligible to serve in Vietnam. Tancredo said he went for his physical, telling doctors he'd been treated for depression, and eventually got a "1-Y" deferment.

Too many of these cowards discuss our troops when they themselves refused to serve when they had the chance. Here's Jed Lewison:

A few minutes ago on The Ed Show, Tom Tancredo tried to make the case against government health care by claiming that the Veterans Administration is unpopular with U.S. military veterans. The only problem for him was that he was up against Markos...who is one of those veterans, unlike Tancredo, a pro-Vietnam War chickenhawk who got a 1-Y deferment.

When Markos pointed out that Tancredo was (a) wrong about the Veterans Administration and (b) not qualified to speak for veterans, Tancredo exploded in anger, demanding an apology. Markos did not oblige, and Tancredo stormed off the set.

Funny, too, how the most thin-skinned of the wingnuts are the same people most prone to making vicious, uncivil, frequently racist and xenophobic remarks. Tancredo, after all, is a guy who claimed the National Council of La Raza was just like the Ku Klux Klan, and called Sonia Sotomayor a racist, and told the people of Brownsville, Texas, that they should build the border fence on the northern side of their city.

And then goes whimpering and whining off the stage when he gets a clean shot to the gut with hard facts. There's a street name for that, but this is a family blog.

Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show yesterday, via Media Matters:

You -- In 2008, in our presidential election, we had a, a, a war veteran, Vietnam War veteran, John McCain, against an elitist, five-minute career senator of a hundred and fifty days. That senator was running as a Democrat, and had actively sought the defeat of the U.S. military in Iraq -- had actively sought to undermine General Petraeus, who was the author of the surge that led to a turnaround in Iraq and a victory. And now that same man is dithering in Afghanistan while American soldiers -- not Bush soldiers, not Obama soldiers, American soldiers -- are dying. At record numbers.

The threat that people in this country who want to be free face is now within our own borders. That's the stark reality. We'll be back.

Obama and the liberals are, in the land of the Limbaughst, the True Enemies of America.

If only Limbaugh really were "just an entertainer." Then we could dismiss him as a clown. But "entertainers" don't have audiences of "dittohead" acolytes who absorb their every word as gospel truth. "Entertainers" don't make condemnations of half the country as being the "enemy within" and actually stand -- and actually stand a chance of the other half nodding its head in agreement.

This, of course, is how you whip up violence: You scapegoat, you demonize, you dehumanize, and most of all, you paint a target on people's backs and say they're they Enemy. And you can't help but suspect Limbaugh is perfectly aware of this.

I devote a fair amount of space in The Eliminationists to Limbaugh. For a lot of reasons. Obviously, he's been doing this for awhile. But he's also stepping it up quite bit.

PROMOTIONAL NOTE: I'll be speaking tonight in Mount Vernon, Wash., at the Lincoln Theater at 7 pm. I'll be discussing my book as well as the recent visit to the city by Glenn Beck.

So many of the saner people were driven out of the military during the Bush administration, it doesn't surprise me that the people left include a lot of the right-wing, racist fringe elements. Still, it's shocking to hear this:

DURHAM — The U.S. military is not just fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s most renowned investigative journalist says.

The army is also “in a war against the White House — and they feel they have Obama boxed in,” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh told several hundred people in Duke University’s Page Auditorium on Tuesday night. “They think he’s weak and the wrong color. Yes, there’s racism in the Pentagon. We may not like to think that, but it’s true and we all know it.”

In a speech on Obama’s foreign policy, Hersh, who uncovered the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War and torture at Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraqi war, said many military leaders want Obama to fail.

“A lot of people in the Pentagon would like to see him get into trouble,” he said. By leaking information that the commanding officer in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, says the war would be lost without an additional 40,000 American troops, top brass have put Obama in a no-win situation, Hersh contended.

“If he gives them the extra troops they’re asking for, he loses politically,” Hersh said. “And if he doesn’t give them the troops, he also loses politically.”

The journalist criticized the president for “letting the military do that,” and suggested the only way out was for Obama to stand up to them.

“He’s either going to let the Pentagon run him or he has to run the Pentagon,” Hersh said. If he doesn’t, “this stuff is going to be the ruin of his presidency.”

Hersh called the “Af-Pak” situation — the spreading conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan — Obama’s main challenge.

The only way for the U.S. to extricate itself from the conflict, Hersh said, is to negotiate with the Taliban.

“It’s the only way out,” he said. “I know that there’s a lot of discussion in the White House about this now.

 Many Thanks to Richard Roeper for exposing the wingnut fool known as Ted Nugent (contact info) for being the coward during the Vietnam war that he was:

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So Ted Nugent roams a concert stage while toting automatic weapons, calls Barack Obama "a piece of -----" and says he told Obama to suck on one of his machine-guns. He also calls Hillary Clinton a "worthless bitch" and Dianne Feinstein a "worthless whore."

That Nugent, he's a man's man. He talks the talk and walks the walk, right?

Except when it was time to register for the draft during the Vietnam era. By his own admission, Nugent stopped all forms of personal hygiene for a month and showed up for his draft board physical in pants caked with his own urine and feces, winning a deferment. Creative!...read on

When he had a chance to actually arm himself with a machine gun he cowered in his own excrement. That's Hannity's man alright. And Roeper makes a great point about the Dixie Chicks. (h/t Peer)

Paddy at Cliff's blog alerted me to a story that I suspect is being wildly downplayed. From the AP wire:

Overwhelmed by the number of soldiers returning from war with mental problems, the Army is planning to hire at least 25 percent more psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers.

A contract finalized this week but not yet announced calls for spending $33 million to add about 200 mental health professionals to help soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health needs, officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.

"As the war has gone on, PTSD and other psychological effects of war have increased," said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general.

It's not a new story, but without a doubt, this is going to be a growing issue for us, one that I'm sure the administration did not factor in at all. Daniel Zwerdling has done a series for NPR on PTSD in returning vets and the way they've been mistreated.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking is this Memorial Day blog by the wife of an Vietnam war vet who took his own life and her ongoing work to recognize and help vets suffering from PTSD before they act as her own husband did. Now that the administration is floating the concept that this will be a "generational" conflict, imagine the exponential damage and pain we're looking at...both here and in Iraq.