Clinton is guilty of SWF (Speaking While Female), and emailgate is just a reminder to us all that she has no business doing what she’s doing and must be punished, for the sake of all decent women everywhere.
FBI Chief James Comey has shown himself to be another bully of the same kind. He has repeatedly talked down to Clinton, admonishing her as a bad parent would a 5-year-old. He has accused her of “poor judgment” and called her use of a private email server “extremely careless.”
It gets said the US military can fight at most two and a half wars at any one time. What does that mean?
That is a statement of military capability. That is not a fiscal statement. Fighting two and a half wars non stop would be a surefire way for America to go bankrupt.
War is meant to be a weapon of last resort. It is not just because of democracy and diplomacy and peace and bloodshed and the ugliness and the unintended consequences. It is also dollars and cents. Wars are terribly expensive.
From the macro perspective, considering America was already fighting two wars in the Bush era, it was but inevitable that America would step back in the Obama era. The pendulum needed to swing.
America's costs in Iraq and Afghanistan ran into the trillions. That was one of the three or four reasons why the 2008 financial meltdown happened. Money is not free.
So how many wars can America fight at any one point in time? Two and a half.
But ideally America should fight zero wars. America should keep the powder dry, just in case. But, for the most part, America should work extra time to exhaust all other options first. Armies are almost like nuclear weapons, not meant to be used.
But when you do use them, you want to make sure all peaceful options were exhausted first, and they are in top shape, and the mission is well defined and achievable, and you are in and out. Open ended wars are not even wars.
America's founding mission is a total spread of democracy. Organizing immigrants and giving them voting rights in at least the big cities would go a long way. The "hombres" can be soldiers of democracy. The forces of democracy are proving less aggressive about using digital tools to spread democracy than those who would use the same to suppress peoples. Taking microfinance to two billion women would further the cause of democracy like few other things. Grassroots political organizing is the best way to spread democracy. It is also much less expensive than wars. And if you handle immigration right it is all paid for. People do it themselves. Remittance has done way more for the Global South than foreign aid ever did. Stop demonizing people.
In the early 2000s Russia actually expressed interest in joining NATO. Russia apparently was rebuffed. That is mind boggling from the peace perspective.
It can be imagined the military industrial complex in America did not like the idea. When you don't have an enemy it is hard to justify a large defense budget.
On the other hand Russia has not exactly gone down the path of democracy. And it does not seem to have discovered some alternate path to putting its economy on a sound path to rapid progress.
Russia is Second World.
Be that as it may it is for Russia and America as the two leading nuclear powers on the planet to take the lead to creating a world free of nuclear weapons. Why keep weapons that everyone knows can never be used? Why leave the options open for false alarms that might end human civilization?
And while the two powers figure out their mutual dynamic, Syria suffers. The innocents in Syria suffer. It is a sad situation.
America could have done a much better job of winning the Cold War. It did not do enough to help Russia in the aftermath. It did not do a good enough job of face saving of a defeated rival.
And it is not too late for Russia to choose the path of democracy as the only available way to rapid economic progress and true greatness.
Letting go of Assad would be a good small step in that direction. Assad is irredeemable. Assad is deplorable. This guy has attacked his own people like Hitler attacked people in other countries.
