Governance for the elite or for the people: can you tell the difference? The Governing for the People
"Behind-the-News" Letter exposes the differences and guides you to
"think outside the politically correct box" about future possibilities.
___________________
Governance for the Elite...or the People
American
culture is evolving in ways that pose increasingly dangerous and
unnecessary constraints on the ability of American society to imagine
effective solutions to the highly interconnected set of foreign policy,
economic policy, environmental policy, and health policy problems it
currently faces.
Taboos obstructing honest evaluation of fundamental policy choices prevent American society from moving effectively in new and desperately needed directions. The American system is based on open debate to find answers to complex problems. That is the best system yet discovered for resolving national problems, but it only works when society faces its options honestly. New directions do exist for addressing this set of challenges, but the roads will only be found if we are willing to look for them.
Ironically, these fundamental decisions—precisely the ones meriting the most meticulous public debate—are typically the public policy decisions made with the least care, the least debate, the least thought. The results include a foreign policy based on military force even when force intensifies hostility; health care as a business rather than a right; environmental policy favoring consumption now rather than preservation for future generations; and an economic policy that has more or less steadily been enriching the super-rich and impoverishing the rest since the Reagan era.
The careful reader may notice an underlying similarity among the four policy arenas: a foreign policy based on force benefits the military-industrial complex, an environmental policy favoring consumption benefits corporations looking for short-term profits, the economic policy benefits the Wall Street, banking, and real estate businesses; the current health care system benefits the insurance and medical businesses. And all four harm the average American.
___________ Planning an "America-Replacement" Strategy for Afghanistan The time has come for the U.S. to
move past the simplistic “go or stay” debate to a focus on the full range of
Afghan policy options.
Three principles that currently seem almost taboo
in
___________ In the next issue... “Oh, dear. What can we do?” What can we do about the war with Islam, the recession, the health care debacle, and other national emergencies in the U.S.? Quite a bit, actually, but it all starts with attitude. The article will focus on health care and the recession...
| ___________ Islamic World Tipping Point The Central Asian-Middle Eastern region is currently at a tipping point, where any one of at least three historic shifts is possible.
The first possible shift is the “Netanyahu option,” a nuclear strike on Iran that would, if successful, empower Israeli rightwing militarists dreaming of Israeli domination of the region. Success is highly unlikely, however, since the aftermath of a nuclear strike would be a classic case of a complex (i.e., unpredictable) situation. The winner would probably be bin Laden.
The second possible shift is what I will optimistically call the “Obama option,” a breakthrough
in U.S.-Iranian relations that would stabilize the region and greatly
facilitate American efforts to resolve the Iraqi and Afghan conflicts.
Although this option would require recognizing Iran’s emergence to regional prominence with the right to choose its own path and constraining the war party in
The third possible shift is the “Putin option,” a breakthrough in Russian-Iranian relations at American expense, propelled by mutual concern over the strategic threat of rising American military power in Central Asia. Various cooperative steps in the energy, maritime in this direction, motivated by intense U.S.-Israeli threats against Iran, are already visible. Such a bilateral breakthrough at American expense would encourage both Iranian and Israeli extremism, wreck the chances for resolving the Western-Iranian nuclear dispute, imperil the American adventure in Afghanistan, and very possibly end up destabilizing Pakistan or, perhaps, result in a distinct type of regional stability enforced by Russia, with the U.S. on the sidelines. Site Author: William deB. Mills |