So long, proconsul.

Gates is leaving, but his wars will remain with us, it appears. He didn't start them, of course, but he was brought in to manage them after they went seriously off the rails. In what I will always consider to be among the clearest evidence of the existence of a permanent institutional foreign policy consensus, Gates was hired to replace Rumsfeld in 2006 when it was obvious that the Bush team's invasion of Iraq was shaking the American empire to its very foundations. I imagine there was resistance from Bush himself, from Rumsfeld, of course, and from Cheney - they had problems with the Iraq Study Group's findings and doubled down on their Iraq disaster, but they had lost the confidence of that institutional elite by that time, and the loss of Congress to the Democrats nudged Rumsfeld over the edge. Cheney was effectively sidelined for the remainder of Bush's second term.

So it goes with empires, I guess. Ours rolled along swimmingly for the last century, gathering steam after World War II, flattening its dissidents, outlasting its main rivals ... until we managed to elect a man so incompetent he could, to borrow a phrase, destroy the empire merely by strolling through it. I'm sure to the nation's imperial board of trustees, George W. seemed a relatively safe bet, particularly with such seemingly reliable minders as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld keeping an eye on the store. That miscalculation is proving very costly. Just as our attack on Vietnam bled us dry (to say nothing of what it did to the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians), this past decade of war - coupled with an amazingly irresponsible policy of deep war-time tax cuts - has helped to hobble our economy, perhaps beyond recovery.

Obama should well be celebrated by the ownership class in America. What the hell, he has salvaged the empire, shored up the banking system, shielded the financial managers from accountability. Beats the hell out of me why they would want rid of him, except that they may want an even better deal. He is trying to return us to that proven imperial model of having others fight our wars for us while resorting to a Murder, Inc. strategy for what is now called "high value" targets. Obama may not succeed in that effort, but he's trying. So Gates will leave, satisfied, I'm sure, that the republic... I mean, the empire is in good hands, his charge fulfilled.

So, farewell, Proconsul Gates. Off to Capri with you, then.

luv u,

jp

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