“America is the most advanced model for civilization on the face of the planet, so when America extends its outstretched hand to Iraq in order to help her, that means, in the lexicon of politics and progress, that a miracle of good fortune has descended onto Iraq, a nation that has suffered greatly from bad luck and misery. And this has been chiefly due to the destructive behavior of its own sons. It is they and no others who have been solely responsible of the misery of their own country! … Beyond Allah, Iraq has no hope or savior except America, which is capable of protecting Iraq from itself and the crimes of its politicians, parties and the greed of neighboring countries - particularly Iran and Syria.”
November 19th, 2008 By TONY CAMPBELL, TMV Columnist
For all of the bi-partisan talk of the campaign, including praise of former President Ronald Reagan, President-elect Obama has reverted to governing in the old-fashioned way - offering plum appointments to members of his own party, instead of the best qualified person.
For example, there are several Republicans who would be better choices for Secretary of State than Senator Hillary Clinton including Senator Chuck Hagel, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and the current holder of the post, Dr. Condoleezza Rice. Plus, they do not have the baggage of a former presidential spouse in their wake.
So far, every job announcement of the Obama transition has been given to left of center Democrat loyalists. I know it is early yet, only two weeks removed from Election Day, but Obama is sending a clear message that political party, not country, will come first.
The sad part about these decisions is the missed opportunity because of inaction. Obama has an opportunity to think outside the box and diffuse some of the Republican negative statements towards him by demonstrating that he will be a President for all of the people. If Obama were to appoint moderate Republicans to high ranking positions, he would be able to show that he kept his promise while dealing a significant blow to any reorganizing opportunities of the RNC.
As one of the first Obamacans to come out in the national media to publicly support Democrat candidate Barack Obama, I believed in the message he was communicating to the American people. Well, President-elect Obama, it is time to make good on your promises…or is the change we hoped for only another “Back to the Future” script starring a bunch of Clinton-era Democrats.
Of the emerging pantheon of articles about why other nations lack their own Obamas, this article from Germany is particularly eye-opening. According to Werner A. Perger of Die Zeit, Germany’s political parties discourage charismatic figures who tend to take the initiative. And why is that? It seems that the road Adolph Hitler and his Nazi party took that nation down is the chief cause of this aversion.
“No wonder that in Old Europe, Obama’s electoral win was registered not only with relief but respect. One is downright fascinated at the way this young senator came out of nowhere, saw and conquered; how he transformed mistrust into confidence through a rhetorical laying on of hands, got young people off of their sofas and in no time at all, made them into campaign volunteers. And how week after week on the Internet, he set new fundraising records by collecting small contributions. Obama is a true fisher of men. It all seemed to happen just the way it was supposed to: Everyone seemed to agree that we [Germans] need and want someone like him. But where is he? ”
“At least for those who are sensitive to the past, even if they agree with the correctness of what is being said, the historical reminder of the eternal cipher’s speech at the Sport Palace is hard to shake. [This was a speech delivered by the Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels at the Berlin Sportpalast on February 18, 1943, calling for “total war,” as the tide of World War II was turning against Germany, see photo, left . The author calls Goebbels the ‘eternal cipher’].
November 18th, 2008 By TONY CAMPBELL, TMV Columnist
President-elect Barack Obama is in a peculiar situation as he tries to fill the top slot at “Foggy Bottom.” Obama’s predicament: How to keep Senator Hillary Clinton as a close confidant while keeping former President Bill Clinton from being a distraction? Over the last week, it has been reported that Senator Clinton is being vetted for the position of Secretary of State. One of the hiccups in making this deal is finding out what Bill has been up to over the last eight years that could cause Obama a severe migraine during the confirmation process.
Personally, I am torn on offering Hillary Clinton any role in the new administration. It makes good political sense for Obama as he is able to have her as a part of his team. This decision follows the logic of having your friends close and your enemies closer. On the other hand, in the short term, any misstep by Bill is going to cause undue headaches for Obama. In the long term if Hillary stays at State for a couple of years, and can demonstrate a failure of leadership at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, she will be better positioned to run against Obama in 2012. She will be free to say, “I supported President Obama but he was not up to the task of leading our country.”
As for Bill and Hillary, this continuing story reminds me of “Kill Bill, parts 1 and 2″. Uma Thurman spent most of those two movies fighting her way to be free of Bill’s (David Carradine) influence. For most of her adult life, Hillary Clinton has been Bill’s first lady in Little Rock and in Washington, D.C. Now she has the ability to put her stamp on the foreign policy of the United States of America…the only problem is the continued shadow of Bill. Unfortunately, there will not be any samurai swords involved, they would have made the vetting process more interesting.
Is the first world - or what today is referred to as the developed world - really prepared to share decision-making power with the second and third worlds? If Sunday’s summit meeting in Washington did nothing else substantial, at least it seems to have convinced some people in the world’s up and coming nations that the answer to that question is yes.
“The current financial crisis appears to be the departure point for a more multilateral world, something that had nearly been forgotten. To put it simply: the rich world has given the signal that it will benefit if it begins to listen to the emerging world.”
“Brazil has a rather important role. The country should use energy and environmental issues to raise its voice in global decision-making - the first issue of which should be forceful action to freeze the Amazon [rainforest] at its current size. And the entire world should contribute to the cost of maintaining the largest tropical forest reserve on the planet. ”
Finally, Bill Kristol speaks (some) truth to reality in his New York Times’ “George W. Hoover?”
The worst financial crisis in almost 80 years has happened on [Bush’s] watch. The Bush administration will leave behind probably the most severe recession in at least a quarter-century. Fairly or unfairly, this will be viewed as George Bush’s economic meltdown.
But, Kristol still doesn’t fully get it:
Republicans and conservatives today face a similar challenge to that of 1976. A hawkish foreign policy, social conservatism and middle-American populism aren’t the problems. Those elements, as embodied on the Republican ticket by John McCain and Sarah Palin, produced a respectable 46 percent of the national vote — in the midst of an economic meltdown, with the Bush administration flailing and House Republicans rebelling and the Republican ticket lacking any coherent economic message.
Perhaps Christopher Manion, in “Kristology and Amnesia,” at The LRC Blog, has the best post-mortem (on Bill Kristol):
The NYT softly, ceaselessly soothes its readership: “conservatives are dolts, see? Ah, here’s another one now. Consider Kid Kristol….” Obediently, the neo’s con-man slides the stiletto into his once-useful idiot: Why, “Bush is the new Hoover! He gave us the Second Depression!” That’s why the GOP went down!
Classic, classic Kristol. Apparently he’s hoping that his statist readers have short memories (after all, they never “stop thinkin’ about tomorrow,” right?), but apparently he doesn’t expect grownups to bother reading his palaver (I did because I have to work off some serious Penance). Remember, this is the guy who wanted US troops to invade Syria after their Iraq Mission was “Accomplished” in May 2003. Hey, let’s have another Kristol Cakewalk! If you’re not with us, you’re against us! Forget the past. Blame Bush not the neocons!
Kristol’s Winsome, Winless War, a $3.5 trillion disaster, is too horrendous to represent merely an elephant in the living room: it is a scorching, searing scar on America’s soul. And yes, the war was the proximate cause of the economic meltdown. As usual, Kristol wants to blame someone else for his seamlessly disastrous judgment, as he collects his hefty fees for serving as the left-wing’s favorite caricature of the right.
November 16th, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTES and SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnists
In September of this year, the American Psychological Association reversed a longstanding policy by voting to prohibit its members from participating in interrogations or acting in an advisory capacity at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere after revelations that some psychologists have been involved in so-called intensive interrogation sessions. The ban belatedly brings the APA into line with the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association.
In a recent New York Timesop-ed piece, Stanley Fish asks a provocative question: Why did psychology, generally considered to be one of the most liberal of disciplines, lag behind its sister professions regarding one of the most troubling consequences of the so-called War on Terror — the Bush administration’s approval of the use of torture and enlisting health-care professionals in and out of uniform into helping extract information from terrorists and other so-called enemy combatants?
Joining Shaun Mullen in discussing this issue is Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, a The Moderate Voice associate editor, fellow columnist and friend. Dr. E is a psychoanalyst who has been in clinical practice for 38 years and specializes in post-trauma recovery, often including veterans, as well as being a poet and author whose books have been published in 32 languages. Mullen is a veteran and career journalist who has covered Vietnam and other wars, and has written extensively on what he calls the Bush Torture Regime.
* * * * *
SM: Is Fish onto something in saying that your fellow psychologists have lagged behind doctors of medicine and psychiatry in addressing torture? And that by implication those are exclusively healing professions but yours is not?
Dr. E: The charge is an important one. Why did it take so long — well over a year after the issue was brought before its national convention — before the APA finally banned members from participating in not only interrogations, but advising the CIA and military on the effects of torture, including literally advising how much assault a person’s body, mind and spirit might be able to sustain before they became entirely undone.
For myself, coming from a refugee and deportee immigrant family, all of this stank of another time and place – Adolph Hitler, who long before the death and torture camps for murdering Jews ordered the extermination of German children if they were lame, developmentally retarded or had other disabilities. He tried to enlist German physicians and pediatricians to write the orders for the death or use in experiments of children confined to institutions.
Even though a majority of German doctors — and the clergy – loudly refused to participate in so-called “mercy killing” programs led by Philipp Bouhler (photo, left), some doctors complied and well over 40,000 young innocents were sent to their deaths at Brandenburg, Hadamar Institute, Grafeneck and elsewhere. Thousands were kept alive for experimentation who had Down Syndrome, what we would now recognize as autism, lead poisoning, and brain damage from accidents and beatings.
I am not one to use the Hitlerian trope to condemn people. But at Guantánamo and elsewhere, psychologists were enlisted to participate in torture and the slowness of the APA to ban such activities is stunning to people of conscience.
I wrote about how the APA was lagging in a December 2007 The Moderate Voicepost. At that time and long before, the voices of many others in my profession were being raised vociferously, yet the APA did not insist on an end to these practices that are so egregiously antithetical to the principles of protecting, helping and healing human life. Ours is supposed to be a healing profession — psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, all. We are not separated by institutional memberships, but rather held together as brothers and sisters who are called upon to mediate and help the suffering of this world.
November 15th, 2008 By TONY CAMPBELL, TMV Columnist
In another stroke of the change we can expect, it seems that the role of Vice-President in the Obama administration may only consist of being a sounding board for the President, unlike the dominant policy role that Dick Cheney possessed over the last eight years.
During the campaign, we heard that Joe Biden was on the ticket to provide experience in leadership regarding foreign policy. Now, it seems that President-elect Obama may choose Senator Hillary Clinton for the top post at the Department of State.
If that turns out to be true, Joe Biden will not have any major involvement in implementing foreign policy. Obama will have Hillary, and former President Bill Clinton, to handle that portfolio.
Where does that leave Biden? Looks like he may already be the odd man out…
One of the more rewarding things about showing Americans what the rest of the world thinks about our nation, is to introduce people to newspapers that they would never ordinarily be able to read. For example, how many Americans have ever read a newspaper from the civil-war stricken Portuguese-speaking country of Angola?
This article by Altino Matos of the Jornal de Angola has an interesting take on the election of Barack Obama. While it suggests that the ‘American Media Machine’ chose Obama to alter our global image - it doesn’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with that.
“The American communication system, one of the largest in existence, was quick to realize that it had to do something substantial and consistent to save the United States, considering the erosion of its image, which began primarily with wars in Afghanistan Iraq and the Middle East.
“The strategy for recovery had to come from the Democrats, but it couldn’t be based solely on words. It was essential to find a face that could incorporate these words and breathe life into a comprehensive program. In this way, the technocrats found in Barack Obama a man of the multitudes.”
‘We are All Americans.’ Most of us recall that phrase used by the French the day after September 11, 2001. After all of the events of the past eight years and the deterioration of America’s image, few would have predicted hearing it again. But we are.
Since the election of President-elect Obama, I have personally seen the phrase in at least three articles we have posted from around the world.
This article from Brazil’s Folha is not only an article of adulation for Barack Obama, but a staunch defense of the United States and a rejection of its critics.
“Never before in the history of this planet has a mixed-race person of African descendent been its most powerful inhabitant. Even though the polls have already indicated Barack Obama’s victory, it is so epic and multidimensional that it fills us with amazement and exhilaration.”
“So much the better that it’s the United States shining this renewing ray of light on the depressed global arena. Among the truly terrible things bequeathed by eight years of Bushism, perhaps the worst is the sharp and stupid anti-Americanism.
“As irrational as it is widespread, this nurtures, and for some it justifies, obscurantist and dangerous forces like Russian neo-Czarism, Chinese absolutism, Chavista petro-populism, Iranian nuclear messianism and Islamo-fascist terrorism.
“Absurd concepts such as that the U.S. is a nation of brute, ignorant and hickish people are spit forth by the supposed worldwide intelligentsia, despite the fact that the country has the best universities on the planet, is the biggest producer and consumer of culture, is the most innovative and creative nation of technologies, has the highest number of Nobel prize winners, invented the Internet and YouTube, and is by far world’s largest economy.”
Even though a majority of German doctors — and the clergy – loudly refused to participate in so-called “mercy killing” programs led by 
