It seems to attack the role of Chomsky in today's Left World can stir up
quite a hornet's nest.      But it's unfair to Noam to focus only on
him.

He is the far left of the 'Left' spectrum of America's most beloved
'Left' commentators.     Molly Ivins most certainly anchors that fold of
good hearted Naderist people of good will... to the right side of this
grouping.      Plus, she's so folksy.

And like Nader and Chomsky, her role as Left commentator during the
Balkan Wars was to attack that mad dog Milosevic, or go completely
silent for long periods of time.     She will attack the military, but
without attacking the military.      They are a trilogy of Leftists that
will never be seen making a call for the need to mobilize antiwar
demonstrations, let alone dirtying their hands in actually doing the
work of organizing them.

Molly is  a big fan of the line... to vote Nader in the state where Gore
will lose big, or win big.  She doesn't want people to lose track of the
fundamental need to beat George Bush.

Yes, the US liberal/ Left perspective of the world tends to slide up and
down the scale of Molly, Nader, to Chomsky.     Chomsky is the favorite
theorist (if not the only theorist) of the three, and appears to be
totally different in his politics.     But how so, really?

Nader and Ivins are the 'pragmatists' who work within the system to
'change' it.     Chomsky stands off to the side critiqueing the system.
Sounds like a balanced diet for dissatisfied American people of good
will?

There is another America of people of less good will.     A negative
undercurrent of semi-criminals, and brute workers, and the just plain
worn out.      They really don't really have a leadership.      There
are tens of millions of them/ us.      They don't vote, and tend to
express themselves spontaneously, (like in LA).

Chomsky criticizes POWER from the planet Pluto for the crowd of people
of less good will.      And so do Molly and Ralph.     Though all three
want a raise to the minimum wage.

I drag Chomsky, Nader, and Molly together with Yugoslavia and Milosevic,
because the US Left people of good will respect them so much.      We
get our news from Common Dreams and Znet.     Here are the three US Left
icons of activity and commentary.     Together, they didn't do anything
the whole time the US was pushing the total dismemberment of Yugoslavia.
Except bemoan about how US policy was strengthing Milosevic, and
bringing about the catastrophe the bombing was designed to prevent (to
use their style of rhetoric).

But who can doubt their opposition to The System?       Without being
torn asunder by their devoted hordes of admirers?      I guess the point
to be made, is that the US Left needs an entirely different leadership
in the days ahead.      An entirely different type of leadership.
One that doesn't bail out of trying to oppose US foreign policy in the
streets.

Below, Molly Ivins punches out the US  military, just like Chomsky
punches out NATO.      Yawn.       Why don't they just shut up, and show
up on a picket line against some US military intervention. or another?
It's the power of example, and their example is not very powerful at the
moment.

Tony Abdo
__________________________________-

Military Madness
by Molly Ivins
 
Faint, but at this late date we abstain from the new mandatory media
pose of being clever and snide about the only two major presidential
candidates we've got, and pause here to consider an issue. (I know -- so
quaint of us.)

The ever-thrilling topic of military spending is our text du jour.
George W. Bush wants to spend more on the military and Al Gore wants to
spend even more than that. The problem is that's not the problem. The
problem is that we spend money on the military stupidly and this in turn
affects everything else because this election is about choices and
priorities.

More for the military means less for education, child care, health care
and all the rest; the military is still the biggest ticket item in
"discretionary" spending.
In recent years, we have paid for seven national commissions or major
Pentagon studies of what needs to be done about the military and the
answers are pretty much the same in every case.
So now Bush says that if he's elected, there will be an eighth study.
The consensus is that we need a military that is more flexible, more
mobile and can be deployed more rapidly. In general, we need to quit
fighting the last war, which was the Cold One.

The military is still set up for precisely that, which means we're fully
prepared to respond to a threat that no longer exists and only arguably
ready to respond to those that do. We're slow and we're muscle-bound.

Spending is not the problem. We spend more on defense than the next 12
highest-spending nations added together.
But here's the kind of dumb thing we do: We have three next-generation
fighter planes on line. The only way to get the price per plane down is
make a lot of one kind, but we're going to make three kinds at an
absolutely staggering cost per copy.

Then there is the dread influence of Congress on the military. The
Pentagon would like to close more redundant bases, but you know how
politicians hate to have bases in their districts closed. So the Senate
has voted to put off any more base closings until at least 2002. Both
major candidates say they are wedded to a national missile defense
system -- the old Reagan Star Wars program tricked out with a new name.
The theory is that we should spend at least $60 billion (and you can
easily double or triple that) on the unlikely theory that someone
somewhere may be nutty enough to try to lob a nuke at us.

The chief technical problem with national missile defense is that you
can fool it -- it can't tell the difference between an incoming nuke and
a herd of decoys. The chief diplomatic drawback is that it doesn't look
like a defensive weapon to the Russians. To them it looks like
first-strike capability -- we'd be able to wipe them out and they would
have no chance to retaliate. This upsets the delightful balance of
terror known as MAD -- mutual assured destruction.

So the Russians see NMD as the end of every nuclear treaty we've ever
signed with them.

If we're so muscle-bound and spend ridiculous amounts of money on
redundant weapons systems, how come we keep hearing that American
soldiers are on food stamps? Bush points this out frequently: How
pathetic -- the very soldiers we put in harm's way reduced to food
stamps. Actually, the number of soldiers who qualify for food stamps is
about one in 200 and most of them qualify because of an odd accounting
gizmo. Some off-base housing allowances are not counted as income, thus
leading to the appearance of a lower income. But that's the kind of
detail that often gets skipped during a campaign, isn't it?

So what is the point of all this? Pretty much what it is across the
board in this race: The candidates are not discussing real issues in a
realistic way.

Gore may be the master of detail, but he is just as misleading as Bush
about what needs to be done. Bush says we have "a military in decline"
and that "for seven years the Clinton-Gore administration has failed to
strengthen America's defenses" and that we have a "hollow force." Senate
Majority Leader Trent Lott says we're in "a downward spiral." This is
pure eyewash but no one is discussing what does need to be done.
Maddening, isn't it?

Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
© Copyright 2000 The Austin American-Statesman
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