By Patrick j. Buchanan
14/10/08 "Information Clearinghouse" --- “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers.”
So Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon advised Herbert Hoover in the Great Crash of ‘29.
Hoover did. And the nation liquidated him — and the Republicans.
In the Crash of 2008, 40 percent of stock value has vanished, almost $9 trillion. Some $5 trillion in real estate value has disappeared. A recession looms with sweeping layoffs, unemployment compensation surging, and social welfare benefits soaring.
America’s first trillion-dollar deficit is at hand.
In Fiscal Year 2008 the deficit was $438 billion.
With tax revenue sinking, we will add to this year’s deficit the $200 to $300 billion needed to wipe the rotten paper off the books of Fannie and Freddie, the $700 billion (plus the $100 billion in add-ons and pork) for the Wall Street bailout, the $85 billion to bail out AIG, and $37 billion more now needed, the $25 billion for GM, Chrysler and Ford, and the hundreds of billions Hank Paulson will need to buy corporate paper and bail out banks to stop the panic.
As Americans save nothing, where are the feds going to get the money? Is the Fed going to print it and destroy the dollar and credit rating of the United States? Because the nations whose vaults are full of dollars and U.S. debt — China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Arabs — are reluctant to lend us more. Sovereign wealth funds that plunged billions into U.S. banks have already been burned.
Uncle Sam’s VISA card is about to be stamped “Canceled.”
The budget is going to have to go under the knife. But what gets cut?
Social Security and Medicare are surely exempt. Seniors have already taken a huge hit in their 401(k)s. And as the Democrats are crafting another $150 billion stimulus package for the working poor and middle class, Medicaid and food stamps are untouchable. Interest on the debt cannot be cut. It is going up. Will a Democratic Congress slash unemployment benefits, welfare, education, student loans, veterans benefits — in a recession?
No way. Yet, that is almost the entire U.S. budget — except for defense, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and foreign aid. And this is where the axe will eventually fall.
It is the American Empire that is going to be liquidated.
Retrenchment has begun with Bush’s backing away from confrontations with Axis-of-Evil charter members Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programs, and will likely continue with a negotiated peace in Afghanistan. Gen. Petraeus and Secretary Gates are already talking “reconciliation” with the Taliban.
We no longer live in Eisenhower or Reagan’s America. Even the post-Cold War world of George H. W. Bush, where America was a global hegemon, is history. In both relative and real terms, the U.S.A. is a diminished power.
Where Ike spent 9 percent of GDP on defense, Reagan 6 percent, we spend 4 percent. Yet we have two wars bleeding us and many more nations to defend, with commitments in the Baltic, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans we did not have in the Cold War. As U.S. weapons systems are many times more expensive today, we have fewer strategic aircraft and Navy ships than Ike or Reagan commanded. Our active-duty Army and Marine Corps consist of 700,000 troops, 15 percent women, and a far higher percentage of them support rather than combat troops.
With so few legions, we cannot police the world, and we cannot afford more. Yet, we have a host of newly hostile nations we did not have in 1989.
U.S. interests in Latin America are being challenged not only by Cuba, but Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Honduras. Brazil, Argentina and Chile go their own way. Russia is reasserting hegemony in the Caucasus, testing new ICBMs, running bomber probes up to U.S. air space. China, growing at 10 percent as we head into recession, is bristling over U.S. military sales to Taiwan. Iran remains defiant. Pakistan is rife with anti-Americanism and al-Qaida sentiment.
The American Empire has become a vast extravagance.
With U.S. markets crashing and wealth vanishing, what are we doing with 750 bases and troops in over 100 countries?
With a recession of unknown depth and duration looming, why keep borrowing billions from rich Arabs to defend rich Europeans, or billions from China and Japan to hand out in Millennium Challenge Grants to Tanzania and Burkina Faso?
America needs a bottom-up review of all strategic commitments dating to a Cold War now over for 20 years.
Is it essential to keep 30,000 troops in a South Korea with twice the population and 40 times the wealth of the North? Why are McCain and Obama offering NATO memberships, i.e., war guarantees against Russia, to a Georgia run by a hothead like Mikheil Saakashvili, and a Ukraine, millions of whose people prefer their kinship to Russia to an alliance with us?
We must put “country first,” says John McCain.
Right you are, Senator. Time to look out for America first
Showing posts with label Empire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Empire. Show all posts
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Monday, December 17, 2007
More Things Change, More they Stay the Same
By: Dr. J. P. Hubert
In the fall of 2006 much was made of the Democratic takeover of Congress. Pundits touted the purported mandate sent by voters to "end the war in Iraq." Despite a great deal of verbiage, the war continues; there being more US forces in Iraq today than were present when the Democrats resumed control of the US House and Senate over one year ago. The standard explanation offered by the leadership is that Democrats lack sufficient votes in the Senate to pass meaningful legislation.
As I have written on several past occassions, senate Democrats could easily stop all Iraq war funding by simply engaging in a filibuster--no further monies would be appropriated--the war would end. Democrats have made it clear that they are unwilling to employ this technique even as a last resort. Apparently, their desire to win the Presidency in 2008 is so strong that they will refuse to act despite the fact that clear majorities of American's want an end to the Iraq war. So much for moral principle, election promises and the all-important oversight function of Congress.
The pursuit of unbridled power has become the ultimate goal for Democrats, not doing the "will of the people" or even adhering to the common morality or common good. Copious data prove that the American presence in Iraq is destabilizing. Moreover the war is illegal and immoral by all applicable international and US legal standards and by a consideration of the standard Judeo-Christian Ethic [common morality which, for 200+ years was controlling in America].
Tragically it has become apparent that neither political party is willing to do what is morally and increasingly fiscally required--end the war in Iraq now. The British (who after years of attempting to preserve an empire finally recognized that they could either save the nation or keep the empire), wisely chose to save their country and divested themselves of empire. In a similar vein, they have now formally turned Basra over to the Iraqi's, ending their occupation of southern Iraq. If only the United States would do the same.
We face a critical choice as a nation, either end our empire now and possibly save our nation, or have it implode as we continue the futile attempt to maintain global hegemony. America can not do both. The United States no longer has the means (manufacturing base, intellectual capital, moral fiber etc.) to function as a global superpower. By virtually every conceivably relevant criterion, our country is in decline.
The recent sale of certain US interstate highways alone should establish that our economic situation is dire. (When a nation has lost its production capacity, it must sell off assets in order to remain liquid). The sale of US assets to foreign entities is beginning to look like a "fire-sale." Smart money is beginning to position itself for relocation off-shore. The elite finanacial class can afford to live anywhere now that they have utilized an immoral "free-trade" policy to enrich themselves on the backs of third-world slave laborers and unemployed Americans.
If the question of ending the American Empire is not addressed [to date, only Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel have discussed it--and the elite media has effectively dissed them] in the campaign of 2008, look for the status quo (continued American Hegemony) to continue irrespective of who wins the Presidency. If that transpires, regular Americans are in for some very tough times ahead.
In the fall of 2006 much was made of the Democratic takeover of Congress. Pundits touted the purported mandate sent by voters to "end the war in Iraq." Despite a great deal of verbiage, the war continues; there being more US forces in Iraq today than were present when the Democrats resumed control of the US House and Senate over one year ago. The standard explanation offered by the leadership is that Democrats lack sufficient votes in the Senate to pass meaningful legislation.
As I have written on several past occassions, senate Democrats could easily stop all Iraq war funding by simply engaging in a filibuster--no further monies would be appropriated--the war would end. Democrats have made it clear that they are unwilling to employ this technique even as a last resort. Apparently, their desire to win the Presidency in 2008 is so strong that they will refuse to act despite the fact that clear majorities of American's want an end to the Iraq war. So much for moral principle, election promises and the all-important oversight function of Congress.
The pursuit of unbridled power has become the ultimate goal for Democrats, not doing the "will of the people" or even adhering to the common morality or common good. Copious data prove that the American presence in Iraq is destabilizing. Moreover the war is illegal and immoral by all applicable international and US legal standards and by a consideration of the standard Judeo-Christian Ethic [common morality which, for 200+ years was controlling in America].
Tragically it has become apparent that neither political party is willing to do what is morally and increasingly fiscally required--end the war in Iraq now. The British (who after years of attempting to preserve an empire finally recognized that they could either save the nation or keep the empire), wisely chose to save their country and divested themselves of empire. In a similar vein, they have now formally turned Basra over to the Iraqi's, ending their occupation of southern Iraq. If only the United States would do the same.
We face a critical choice as a nation, either end our empire now and possibly save our nation, or have it implode as we continue the futile attempt to maintain global hegemony. America can not do both. The United States no longer has the means (manufacturing base, intellectual capital, moral fiber etc.) to function as a global superpower. By virtually every conceivably relevant criterion, our country is in decline.
The recent sale of certain US interstate highways alone should establish that our economic situation is dire. (When a nation has lost its production capacity, it must sell off assets in order to remain liquid). The sale of US assets to foreign entities is beginning to look like a "fire-sale." Smart money is beginning to position itself for relocation off-shore. The elite finanacial class can afford to live anywhere now that they have utilized an immoral "free-trade" policy to enrich themselves on the backs of third-world slave laborers and unemployed Americans.
If the question of ending the American Empire is not addressed [to date, only Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel have discussed it--and the elite media has effectively dissed them] in the campaign of 2008, look for the status quo (continued American Hegemony) to continue irrespective of who wins the Presidency. If that transpires, regular Americans are in for some very tough times ahead.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Most Americans Ignorant of US Imperialism/Militarism
Editorial by: Dr. J. P. Hubert
Many authors and academics have written excellent works (Andrew Bacevich comes to mind) detailing how militaristic the United States has become; particularly since the end of WWII.
Subsequent to his two terms, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that a growing military industrial complex (MIC) was beginning to endanger the American Republic through the increasing control it exerted over Congressional spending. The elite media can now be added (MMIC).
The existence of a permanent army, then the post-Vietnam war creation of an all-volunteer force and recently a mercenary army component (in the form of military "contractors") all have contributed to a growing US militarism in support of an increasingly more hegemonic foreign policy.
Post 9/11, the current administration promulgated what has become known as the "Bush Doctrine", simply put; a commitment to waging foreign wars of aggression under the rubric of "pre-emption" as a form of "defense." In so doing the Bush administration has engaged in the worst form of sophistry--in contemporary parlance--spin. To label offensive wars of aggression defensive is to engage in language deconstruction a blatant form of intellectual dishonesty.
When a nation attacks another on the basis of nothing more than a presumption, in essence a probability calculation that at some future date, the other nation might either attack or make WMD's available to terrorists, it is not engaging in legitimate defense--rather, it is acting preventively and offensively in an aggressive manner. The latter of course is illegal under international and US law.
It is also immoral, based on the well developed corpus of Just War Theory which holds that war must be waged only in response to an actual or imminent attack, after all reasonable alternatives have been exhausted i.e. as a last resort, with proportionate force (only as required to match the threat) and with reasonable chance of success. Moreover, it is never morally licit to intentionally/knowingly attack non-combatant civilians something which occurs routinely in the waging of modern wars of aggression--preventive wars under the Bush Doctrine.
Regrettably, the vast majority of Americans are completely ignorant of the applicable international humanitarian law, US law and the relevant Just War Doctrinal principles with respect to waging War. Equally unfortunate is our blind presumption that America's intent and actions abroad are benign and admirable. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1989/1990 (over successive administrations), it has been the foreign policy of the United States to prevent any nation from ever threatening our now solitary global super-power status.
We have for almost 2 decades engaged in increasingly more threatening and bellicose rhetoric and militaristic behavior. Yet, we wonder why so much of the world hates us. As Patrick J. Buchanan has reasoned, they (the terrorists) hate us not for our values but because of our foreign policy. They are over here because we are over there. They want us out of their region and off of their land. We must admit that under similar circumstances, we would not wish to be occupied or controlled, by an outside foreign power.
The question then is why do Americans not rise up and demand that their government stop behaving in an immoral fashion--as a militaristic Hegemon? Is it fear, ignorance or simply sloth? This writer suspects it is a combination of ignorance and sloth. Unfortunately, many of our citizens are simply too preoccupied attempting to eek out a living what with the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs over the past 15 years--NAFTA, WTO, etc to properly educate themselves or engage in the necessary social action. The "dumbing-down" of an increasingly illiterate populace doesn't help.
No nation can long survive while horrendously in debt, over-extended militarily and incapable of manufacturing anything but weapons. We are now almost completely dependent on China and others for our daily consumer products and the money with which to purchase them. If this is not quickly corrected, we are in for some extremely trying times. The diagnosis is clear, the prescription bitter --END THE EMPIRE before its too late.
Many authors and academics have written excellent works (Andrew Bacevich comes to mind) detailing how militaristic the United States has become; particularly since the end of WWII.
Subsequent to his two terms, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that a growing military industrial complex (MIC) was beginning to endanger the American Republic through the increasing control it exerted over Congressional spending. The elite media can now be added (MMIC).
The existence of a permanent army, then the post-Vietnam war creation of an all-volunteer force and recently a mercenary army component (in the form of military "contractors") all have contributed to a growing US militarism in support of an increasingly more hegemonic foreign policy.
Post 9/11, the current administration promulgated what has become known as the "Bush Doctrine", simply put; a commitment to waging foreign wars of aggression under the rubric of "pre-emption" as a form of "defense." In so doing the Bush administration has engaged in the worst form of sophistry--in contemporary parlance--spin. To label offensive wars of aggression defensive is to engage in language deconstruction a blatant form of intellectual dishonesty.
When a nation attacks another on the basis of nothing more than a presumption, in essence a probability calculation that at some future date, the other nation might either attack or make WMD's available to terrorists, it is not engaging in legitimate defense--rather, it is acting preventively and offensively in an aggressive manner. The latter of course is illegal under international and US law.
It is also immoral, based on the well developed corpus of Just War Theory which holds that war must be waged only in response to an actual or imminent attack, after all reasonable alternatives have been exhausted i.e. as a last resort, with proportionate force (only as required to match the threat) and with reasonable chance of success. Moreover, it is never morally licit to intentionally/knowingly attack non-combatant civilians something which occurs routinely in the waging of modern wars of aggression--preventive wars under the Bush Doctrine.
Regrettably, the vast majority of Americans are completely ignorant of the applicable international humanitarian law, US law and the relevant Just War Doctrinal principles with respect to waging War. Equally unfortunate is our blind presumption that America's intent and actions abroad are benign and admirable. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1989/1990 (over successive administrations), it has been the foreign policy of the United States to prevent any nation from ever threatening our now solitary global super-power status.
We have for almost 2 decades engaged in increasingly more threatening and bellicose rhetoric and militaristic behavior. Yet, we wonder why so much of the world hates us. As Patrick J. Buchanan has reasoned, they (the terrorists) hate us not for our values but because of our foreign policy. They are over here because we are over there. They want us out of their region and off of their land. We must admit that under similar circumstances, we would not wish to be occupied or controlled, by an outside foreign power.
The question then is why do Americans not rise up and demand that their government stop behaving in an immoral fashion--as a militaristic Hegemon? Is it fear, ignorance or simply sloth? This writer suspects it is a combination of ignorance and sloth. Unfortunately, many of our citizens are simply too preoccupied attempting to eek out a living what with the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs over the past 15 years--NAFTA, WTO, etc to properly educate themselves or engage in the necessary social action. The "dumbing-down" of an increasingly illiterate populace doesn't help.
No nation can long survive while horrendously in debt, over-extended militarily and incapable of manufacturing anything but weapons. We are now almost completely dependent on China and others for our daily consumer products and the money with which to purchase them. If this is not quickly corrected, we are in for some extremely trying times. The diagnosis is clear, the prescription bitter --END THE EMPIRE before its too late.
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