Walter Brasch writing at Pacific Views looks at The Politics of Humanitarian Aid beginning with the complaints about the way the junta in Burma reacted to the recent cyclone and then does an in depth review of all of the missteps made by the Hedgemony in the response to Katrina.

The Hedgemony has left the US in a moral pit, rather than the high ground.

that even the inexperienced press secretary from Texas could figure out that Condoleezza Rice wasn’t doing her job as National Security Advisor.

Fresh Air has an interview with Scott McClellan, and Terry Gross was asking general questions about how things worked in the White House. When it came to the Iraq invasion, she asked who really made the decisions.

In the course of answering the question [the Shrubbery, in case you’re interested], McClellan noted that instead of advising, Rice simply agreed with whatever policy the Shrubbery seemed to prefer. She never challenged the process or pointed out any problems. Rather than seeing her role as being an advisor, she acted as an “agreer”.

We could have saved a lot of money by buying Dubya a Furby rather than paying Rice’s salary.

On May 30^th in Vermont a former Director of the National Security Agency, Russian linguist, and realist passed away. The Washington Post covers the life of William E. Odom, Lieutenant General, US Army (retired):

He had a reputation as a military hard-liner who opposed any compromise with the Soviet Union, which made his vocal opposition to the current involvement in Iraq all the more cogent and surprising.

“Among senior military people, he was probably the first to consider the war in Iraq a misbegotten adventure,” Brzezinski said yesterday. “He believed that we’re just stoking hostility to the United States in that region and developing an opposition that cannot be defeated by military means. He was very outspoken.”

[Read more →]

In what will probably not be the last of such occurrences, Mary Beth & EBW at Wampum have decided to to close down the blog. The archives will remain available.

It is one of the veteran “lefty” blogs and probably the only place you would find discussions of autism, Native American issues, politics, and heavy-duty geek posts on the same page. They hosted the Koufax Awards, the only important awards for the Left, for many years. The choice to start or end a blog is personal, but reasonable and realistic voices are rare, and will be missed when they fall silent.

I wish them well.