It is widely believed in media and political circles that despite the difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan, American foreign policy is back under some kind of adult/mainstream management. In other words, that we've left the Cheney/Rumsfeld era behind for a period of Gates/Rice normalcy and that Iran regime change adventurism is safely off the table. But put together what the disagreements with Fallon were about, the fact that the president chose him as someone he thought he could work with not more than one year ago, and the almost unprecedented nature of the resignation and it becomes clear that that assumption must be gravely in error.Tags: iraq war, iran war
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Jesus, Mary and Joseph (that's a prayer, not an exclamation)
Admiral Fallon, the CENTCOM commander who was widely believe to be against war with Iran, has resigned. Josh Marshall says for the record that at this point it's not publicly known whether he fell or was pushed. But you don't resign a military post of that nature unless you're suffering some grave personal crisis or the administration wants you out. I'm betting on the latter. And Josh writes (Big Picture on Fallon TPM 03/11/08):
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It's surprising that Old Hickory is such a hero of yours. He was a warmonger, and what he did to the Native Americans, forcibly removing them from their homes and moving them hundreds of miles away to reservations, was one of the most ignominious, disgraceful episodes in American history. Oh, my, my! (with respect to Ringo)
If you search at this blog for "Andrew Jackscon", you'll find discussion of the down side of Old Hickory's legacy as well as the positive.
He's an important symbol not because he was a saint. It's because in his stands against secession/nullification and the concentrated "money power" associated with the Bank of the US, as well as in his political movement generally, he defended the nation as a democratic institution and expanded the possibilities of the democratic process in critical ways.
It's symbolic of the enduring importance of Jackson and his movement that the Mississippi Democratic Party holds an annual event called the Jefferson-Jackson-Hamer Dinner, pairing the slaveowning democrats Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson with the civil rights activists and leader Fannie Lou Hamer.
Democracy advances through the agency of flawed human beings. Andrew Jackson is a prime example of that.
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