Anyone But Bush -- And That's What We Got, Anyone By Ed Henry -- Price of Liberty

12/03/08

Anyone But Bush -- And That's What We Got, Anyone
By Ed Henry

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August 16, 2004

With more than 725 military bases spread throughout 70 percent of the world, there is plenty of reason for people to hate us. All you have to do is imagine what it would be like to have Russian or Chinese military bases spread throughout the United States.

We are a military empire that causes more grief by accident than most U.S. citizens realize. Combine that with a system of international banking that squeezes the life blood out of almost every other nation and you've got the makings of everlasting resentment if not pure hatred.

If we really wanted to win the war against terrorism, a tactic of the oppressed, we would pull out of every country where we are not wanted. Bring our boys home and if we can't find them jobs put them to work guarding our borders, a task we do not seem able to manage. Likewise, if we truly believed in democracy, we would let the people of each occupied country vote on whether or not they want us there. But these things will never happen because we are hell bent on building more bases in more countries to protect our "national interests." Long live the military empire.

If he has done nothing else, George W. Bush has articulated the idea that "might is right." We've pulled out of every meaningful international treaty without proposing anything better. We've abandoned every alliance from the Kyoto Protocol to the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty. As the nation that invented and perfected nuclear weapons, and still the only country that has used them, where do you suppose our vast stockpiles are located? How many of them are readied in the more than 725 military installations throughout 70 percent of the world?

We've already suffered one horrendous precision attack on our "New World Order" using our own technology against us. And now President Bush wants to develop and test more new nuclear devices, specifically smaller nuclear weapons that can be carried by ground forces and with one-third the destructive power of the bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Isn't that nice?

As we edge closer and closer to the two year battle over who is going to be president after November 2nd, the campaign seems to center on who could do the same military job better, who would be best as Commander-in-Chief of our military empire. Choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.

No one but Howard Dean came out against the invasion of Iraq and the media crucified him for his "aaarrggh" bellowing. The remaining two candidates are calling it a war instead of an invasion and are now arguing about whom best can protect the homeland while continuing military expansion. No matter what happens in Iraq, we will end up with more military bases from which to launch attacks against neighboring states not yet in our military empire.

Ironically, the arguments center around which candidate has the better record for service during our most infamous and degrading conflict in Vietnam, some thirty years ago, another conflict where we should never have been there in the first place – all this, without asking or looking at what became of Vietnam after we put our tail between our legs and pulled out of that tropical paradise of bomb craters.

Other than our own revolution, the conflict in Vietnam set the precedent that military superiority can be defeated by guerilla forces who cannot be distinguished from civilians, what we today call insurgents but once called an underground or freedom fighters because they have the support of the occupied residents, our Achilles Heel and the reason we are never going to win the ambiguous War on Terrorism anymore than we've won the War on Drugs.

Worst of all, we can't afford this belligerent Empire.

Setting aside the moral and political questions about the number of lives that have been lost on both sides during the invasion of Iraq after the decade of impoverishing embargoes, or that we are now filling mass graves just as Saddam did to control the tribal factions, we simply cannot afford the money to support this military empire and the quagmires it develops.

The Bush administration has increased the national debt $917 billion in the last 14 months and will soon be forced to ask Congress for another trillion dollar raise in order to borrow more. Don't you think we deserve an accounting? Not having the tax revenue it requires, the government resorts to borrowing and putting the burden of repayment on the shoulders of future taxpayers.

Instead of following the democratic process of competitive bidding, allowing other nations to bid on rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure we so systematically destroyed or even allowing, training, and paying the Iraqis to do it themselves, we have awarded reconstruction contracts to private Halliburton subsidiaries and have concentrated on training Iraqi labor in police matters often trained by American mercenaries or soldiers of fortune. All of which increases costs for American taxpayers.

On top of that, we've got a dollar that's falling in value worldwide and countries like China and Japan that have been loaning us billions will eventually wise up to the fact that they are better off risking their investments elsewhere and cashing in their U.S. Treasury holdings. The Treasury is already having difficulty selling the number of securities it puts up for auction.

We've also got a balance of trade that's completely out of whack by more than $600 billion in the red so far this year and not helped by the outsourcing of jobs and the number of industries that have either left the country in order to survive or have simply gone under. Even the Pentagon claims that it would have to drastically increase its outlandish $417 billion annual budget if forced to "buy American."

Now everything costs more, inflation is outpacing wage increases, the Fed will raise interest rates to try to compensate, but thousands of people laid off whose benefits have run out are no longer statistics. Many have taken jobs that pay considerably less than they once made, and consumer spending is way down. This is reflected in fewer tax receipts for the government that in turn necessitates more borrowing.

There is no one but the American taxpayer to foot the bill, whether it's on the basis of direct taxation with the loss of other normal programs or the pay-me-later plan of the borrowholics.

And the federal government is still scamming workers out of a sizable chunk of their retirement money with no intention of stopping or becoming honest.

The deficit currently causing a buzz and changing estimates of a record around $450 billion doesn't include the money stolen from Social Security, military retirement, and other entitlements. The real deficit will be well over $600 billion this year, probably close to $666 billion, the mark of the beast.

Meanwhile, every State in the Union is in financial difficulty without sufficient revenue for education or health care and increasingly dependent on things like lotto and casinos, the common man's hope for climbing out of credit card debt with luck instead of a good job or suing someone. Monies that are supposed to come from the federal government to implement homeland security and first responder measures are also far short of the promise.

These things didn't happen overnight and cannot all be laid at the feet of the precision terrorist 9/11 attack on the New World Odor's international banking and the Pentagon. Most Americans are not even aware of our military empire and its 725 military bases in 70 percent of the world. Nor are they aware of PNAC's manifesto to extend America's empire as detailed in the 1997 "Project for a New American Century" that was waiting in the wings along with the Patriot Act for an excuse to further this madness.

Ask yourself where John Kerry came from, what powers brought this man with such a lackluster record in the Senate to the forefront, does he have any viable solutions to the above, or whether he's just another figurehead for the power structure.

We can't afford the military empire and our enemies know it.

References:

The Sorrows of Empire, by Chalmers Johnson