US Army Soldiers prepare to move from cover during an attack by anti-Afghan forces in the Tantil village in eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province, on March 13, 2010. Photo via the US Army by Staff Sgt. Gary A. Witte.

     

Unsatisfied with simply denying 30 million Americans health care coverage, crying crocodile tears for the Constitution, and labeling skeptics of their point of view "socialist," right-wing retrogressives have decided they need to up the ante to halt Democratic reforms. They need to bash a kid.

The kid in question is 11-year-old Marcelas Owens, who has become a young public crusader for health insurance reform since his mother, 27-year-old fast-food worker Tifanny Owens, contracted pulmonary hypertension, lost her job due to her poor health, lost her insurance due to her unemployment, and finally died, leaving Marcelas in the care of his grandmother.

In most people's books, that would make Marcelas a sympathetic soul, deserving of compassion and maybe a little assistance. If that's how you feel about it, don't tell Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, or the semiliterates who run this "news" site. McClatchy's Les Blumenthal collected the right-wingers' anti-Marcelas vitriol in a rusty bucket and splashed it out all over the Internet, recording for posterity their emphatic "Yes!" in reply to the question: Are you douchier than a fifth-grader?

As the late sportscaster George Michael used to say, let's go to the tape:

     

When you spend a lot of time in Iraq as I have—or, alternatively, when you spend a lot of time in the US hanging around certain war hawks who never spent time in Iraq—you're bound to hear about the concept of wasta. It's an Arabic term, one that roughly translates to "pull" or "clout," and it usually refers to one's standing to deal with the local mover-and-shaker sheikhs. But to hear the neocons tell it, wasta is the reason we went to Iraq, the reason we support Israel's most imprudent iron-fist moves, the reason for George W. Bush's cowboy diplomacy: It's that sandy, desert-heat-tempered combination of "old hatreds, confessional violence, ethnic bigotry and a culture of corruption" that only comprehends strength and only respects violence. Thugs like Saddam Hussein, Hamas, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs had wasta in the Arab world, and the only way to spread American- or Israeli-style democracy in the region was to win the wasta war. Hence the original neocon's cry, "peace through strength." The Arab will respect us as soon as he's been "liberated"—or, if necessary, broken—by us. 

Ignore the racism implicit in that worldview for a minute, and just take the neocon thesis at face value. Because there's good news and bad news. The good news is, in some sense, they were right: It turns out sentiment toward the US on "the Arab street" largely depends on how powerful America appears. The bad news is, Arabs think America's wasta is pretty much at an all-time low. And the reason for US weakness is not a Democratic administration: It's the failure of the neocons' grand game.

How do we know? According to Foreign Policy's Mark Perry, Gen. David Petraeus, the chief of US Central Command, had his staff brief Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen in January on Arab-Israeli affairs. The point of the presentation, Perry says, was to stress how bad things had gotten:

The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that [US negotiator and former senator George] Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) "too old, too slow...and too late."

That the US military is now dipping its feathers in these controversial waters tells you just how far our standing has fallen in the Middle East, and how much of a threat has been posed to our security by neoconservative overreach. The message seems to be that peace can come through strength...but contrary to what Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and Fox News might have you believe, strength doesn't come from annexing Iraq as a 51st state. Or from rolling over to the anti-Palestinian whims of Israeli Likudniks like Arik Sharon and Bibi Netanyahu. (Our own estimable Kevin Drum the other day expressed his disbelief that Netanyahu could show up Vice President Joe Biden as he did last week in announcing new Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem.) 

Hopefully, Petraeus' concern is also a sign of changes to come in the US-Israel relationship—changes that will truly favor American security. "There are important and powerful lobbies in America: the NRA, the American Medical Association, the lawyers -- and the Israeli lobby," Perry says, "but no lobby is as important, or as powerful, as the U.S. military."  

     

The AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor federation, decided to officially endorse the final health care bill today, giving the Democrats another ally in their final scramble for votes. The group had been divided over whether to endorse the final bill due to deep-seated concerns about the excise tax—particularly a last-minute provision that increased the rate of the tax’s increase in 2020.

What finally convinced the group to come on board? The AFL-CIO had successfully lobbied for a delay in implementing the excise bill for non-unionized, as well as unionized workers—which also bought them time to push for further changes. “We have 10 years to change something,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said on a conference call this afternoon. “We intend to go out and say to our members, this is what we've accomplished this is what the bill does, this is not the end of health care reform—we still have room to move and we'll continue to fight.” The group also won a commitment from the White House to pass a separate provision that would require construction contractors with more than five workers to provide insurance, which building trade unions have been pushing for.

     

When was the last time you saw the headline, "Cost of [Pentagon-weapons-system-of-your-choice] halved"?  Probably never.  Still, the thought came to mind when this recent Associated Press headline caught my eye: "Pentagon: F-35 fighter jet cost doubles." 

Here's the story behind it:  Since 2001, when an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was expected to cost an already hefty $50 million, the plane's cost has soared into the stratosphere (despite the fact that the aircraft itself has barely left the ground).  The estimated cost today is $113 million per plane.  Yes, that's per plane.  This supposed future workhorse of the US military is now priced like the planet's most precious gem.  It's also 2 ½ years behind schedule.  Keep in mind that the Marines, the Air Force, and the Navy are planning to buy a combined 2,450 of them for what's now an eye-popping $323 billion.  And if you think the costs are likely to stay in the $113 million range, given the history of Pentagon cost overruns, then I have a nice little national security bridge to Brooklyn I think the US public might love.      

In other words, if all goes well from here (an unlikely possibility), a single future weapons system is now estimated to cost the American taxpayer almost one-third of what the Obama administration's health-care plan is expected to cost over a decade.  You could even think of the Pentagon's weapons procurement process as the health-care system of the national security state.  Its costs just never stop rising.  In fact, the Government Accountability Office pegs major weapons systems cost overruns since 2001 at $295 billion, another near third of the cost of the health-care bill supposedly coming to a vote this week.