G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
The Problem With a "War" Strategy
By Thom Hartmann
Created Sep 12 2007 - 9:26am
The eerie juxtaposition of General Betrayus testifying yesterday before
Congress, and it being 9/11 (which helped Bush bring us disasters ranging
from the PATRIOT Act to the Iraq War and Occupation) brings an opportunity
to re-understand what's been happening here and in Iraq these past six
years, and offers an insight into a way forward.
Imagine, God forbid, that a major city in America were to be dramatically
attacked (a 9/11 level of destruction only on steroids), or fall apart
because of a natural disaster. Detroit, for example, or San Francisco.
Massive destruction, damaging most of the homes - it could be an earthquake
in San Francisco, or a horrific tornado in Detroit, or a nuclear device in
either.
Water is cut off, electric wires downed, the phone systems taken out. People
are dazed, in shock and awe. The prisons are damaged, and thousands of
criminals are now on the streets, quickly melting back into the civilian
populace. The destruction is massive.
The federal government then responds. They put up a wall around the city,
and remove from office all employees and elected officials of the state and
local governments. Fire all the police and fire departments. Stop paying
doctors and hospitals. Throw up cordons around each city to prevent nearby
communities from coming in to help.
Why? Because the President believes that a mythical force - "The Free
Market" - will automatically and magically come to the aid of the damaged
city.
He declares that instead of paying normal taxes and getting normal services,
nobody will any longer get Social Security payments, food stamps, Medicare
or Medicaid. All the "big government" programs are ended, replaced with a
flat 15% income tax and an elimination of all regulations on corporate
action, either local or multinational. Unions are outlawed. The 200 largest
companies - and thus the largest employers - in each city are shut down,
because they've been running "inefficiently": they're now for sale to any
transnational corporation that wants them, (but, given the devastation, none
are showing any interest).
Consistent with the President's belief that the only legitimate function of
government is military, he brings 20,000 troops into each city.
But the people are now unemployed. Those with enough assets to do so have
already fled the cities forever, knowing they will find better opportunities
elsewhere. Those remaining are finding it hard to get gas for their cars,
have only sporadic electricity, and are finding themselves the victims of
water-borne disease (the government-run water treatment facilities have been
abandoned, on the assumption that the "Free Market" will take care of water
needs) and the recently freed criminals. Citizens loot the now-closed
stores, looking for food and things that they may be able to sell to ward
off the danger of their current unemployment.
At first, they protest in the streets, demanding a return of their jobs,
their water and electricity, and some federal money so the remnants of the
local construction companies can begin to rebuild their cities. But the
President orders his soldiers to suppress the demonstration, and soldiers
shoot and kill some of the protesters, finding it "impossible" to tell the
difference between "protesters" and "criminals."
The people fight back, shooting at the soldiers. The President declares
martial law, and in the background brings in John Negroponte, a black-ops
specialist who is alleged to have helped organize death squads in Central
America, to funnels guns and training to professional hit men to take out
those citizens of the two cities who may have any history of political
dissent. Within weeks, bodies of young men with their hands tied behind
their backs and bullets in the back of their heads begin to show up on the
streets.
The people of the surrounding regions - the rest of America - want to know
what the President is going to do for and about San Francisco and Detroit.
He says that the cities occupied by his military forces will soon be
pacified if we'll just give him a bit more time, more troops, and more tanks
and bullets. Discussion of the return of "normal" government - Medicaid,
Medicare, Social Security payments, free health care, public education,
water, electricity, and food stamps - are all absent from the news media,
which is owned by big corporations who agree with the President's belief
that the mythical "Free Market" will solve everything, eventually.
Meanwhile, people in Detroit and San Francisco are both fighting among
themselves and against the army. Black and white, Asian and Hispanic, rich
and poor - neighborhoods are creating their own militias to protect
themselves, and shooting on sight anybody who "looks different" who enters
their own territory. In the power vacuum created by the loss of government,
religious leaders emerge as the new power brokers, and churches and mosques
and synagogues become centers where people can find food, shelter, and an
authority figure who can resolve local disputes.
The President declares these local religious figures "insurgents" and orders
his military to find and arrest them. The military is meanwhile coming under
increasing attack from local people, pissed off that they are getting
progressively less and less water, electricity, and food. Two thirds of all
medical personnel have fled the cities, and the hospitals destroyed in the
tornado and earthquake have not been rebuilt.
Local contractors want to help out and put people back to work, but they are
forbidden from getting any federal monies. Their workers remain unemployed.
Meanwhile, the President hires some friends of his from Texas to go into
Detroit and San Francisco to rebuild the cities using out-of-town labor with
all the money going to his friends in Texas. The locals in SF and Detroit
resent this, and begin to shoot at the "contractors" as well.
The insurgency is now well under way. The President pleads with the American
people for another few billion dollars to pay for his military operation and
his Texas contractors. His generals talk about how they've pacified parts of
Grosse Point and Dearborn in Detroit and Nob Hill in San Francisco. The US
House and Senate are torn apart between a desire to pull out the soldiers -
who are dying in increasing numbers - and those who believe we must first
"pacify" the "insurgents" in Detroit and San Francisco. Unable to reach a
consensus, and with a general loyal to the President pushing for more time
and money to "pacify" Detroit and San Francisco, Congress votes another few
billion dollars and more time to the President.
Meanwhile, the President's advisors tell him that if he can just wait long
enough, the magical "Free Market" will solve all problems in Detroit and San
Francisco. Eventually, transnational corporations will see the huge and
cheap labor force in the cities - which are now totally impoverished - as an
asset. The 15% flat tax will bring prosperity. The privatization of Social
Security and medical services and schools will bring "opportunity" to the
people of the two cities. Just wait, it'll happen.
The only solution allowed for discussion is the military solution. After
all, we now have to "win back" Detroit and San Francisco. We have to kill
off those engaging in racial, religious, regional, or "sectarian" violence.
And, sure enough, as neighborhoods reorganize themselves by race and
ethnicity, as the young protesters are killed off, and the local religious
leaders take over the functions of government - providing education, health
care, and even food and safe water - the violence subsides in those
localities. The President claims these reductions in local violence are
"proof" that his military strategy to pacify Detroit and San Francisco is
"showing progress."
And so, for another year, the nation votes for more military funds, waiting
for the magical "free market" solution to take hold, forgetting the lesson
of 7000 years of city-state civilization that public services, progressive
taxes, and local government are necessary to a civil and functional society.
Sound eerily familiar? This is what the Republicans and the Bush
Administration did to Iraq (and partially did to New Orleans).
Lest you've forgotten, the main reason why the Bush Administration had no
"Plan B" for Iraq, no planning whatsoever for anything beyond the first 3
months after the successful war to knock down Saddam's government, is
because they instead had an economic plan.
Bush's old Andover Prep School roommate L. Paul Bremmer dissolved the 200
largest companies in Iraq, putting people out of work and putting the
companies up for sale to transnational corporations. The nation's
progressive income tax was replaced by a 15% flat tax. State-subsidized food
distribution was phased out, as was the Iraqi equivalent of Social Security
for both retirees and the disabled, widowed, or orphaned. State-subsidized
higher education was privatized. "Domestic content laws" that required Iraqi
labor or components in Iraqi-sold products were done away with; the doors
were thrown open to transnational corporations to take up to 100 percent of
their profits out of Iraq, and to import into Iraq their cheap-labor-made
products from outside the country. Labor unions were banned, and
transnationals could bring in cheap labor from outside the nation (no longer
"illegal immigrants" because laws on immigration for labor were done away
with), displacing Iraqi workers.
The response of the Iraqi people was to fight back. And the response by the
Republican True Believers in the mythical "Free Market" was to use the only
tool they believe government should have - the military.
Now we're asking if the military will "win or lose" in Iraq.
It's the wrong question.
Instead, we should be asking: When we're going to do in Iraq what we did in
Europe after war destroyed that continent? When are we going to begin a "big
government" solution, empower labor, raise taxes on the rich to reinstate
social welfare programs for the poor, and protect local industries with
tariffs and domestic content laws (like the Chinese and Japanese use)?
Only when these things begin will we really see "victory" in Iraq, if
"victory" means a functioning and independent nation.
But because such things are a total repudiation of
Republican/Rubin-Greenspan-Clinton/conservative economic and political
doctrine, odds are that the real questions we should be asking won't even be
raised until there is a new President here in the United States.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Thom Hartmann
Created Sep 12 2007 - 9:26am
The eerie juxtaposition of General Betrayus testifying yesterday before
Congress, and it being 9/11 (which helped Bush bring us disasters ranging
from the PATRIOT Act to the Iraq War and Occupation) brings an opportunity
to re-understand what's been happening here and in Iraq these past six
years, and offers an insight into a way forward.
Imagine, God forbid, that a major city in America were to be dramatically
attacked (a 9/11 level of destruction only on steroids), or fall apart
because of a natural disaster. Detroit, for example, or San Francisco.
Massive destruction, damaging most of the homes - it could be an earthquake
in San Francisco, or a horrific tornado in Detroit, or a nuclear device in
either.
Water is cut off, electric wires downed, the phone systems taken out. People
are dazed, in shock and awe. The prisons are damaged, and thousands of
criminals are now on the streets, quickly melting back into the civilian
populace. The destruction is massive.
The federal government then responds. They put up a wall around the city,
and remove from office all employees and elected officials of the state and
local governments. Fire all the police and fire departments. Stop paying
doctors and hospitals. Throw up cordons around each city to prevent nearby
communities from coming in to help.
Why? Because the President believes that a mythical force - "The Free
Market" - will automatically and magically come to the aid of the damaged
city.
He declares that instead of paying normal taxes and getting normal services,
nobody will any longer get Social Security payments, food stamps, Medicare
or Medicaid. All the "big government" programs are ended, replaced with a
flat 15% income tax and an elimination of all regulations on corporate
action, either local or multinational. Unions are outlawed. The 200 largest
companies - and thus the largest employers - in each city are shut down,
because they've been running "inefficiently": they're now for sale to any
transnational corporation that wants them, (but, given the devastation, none
are showing any interest).
Consistent with the President's belief that the only legitimate function of
government is military, he brings 20,000 troops into each city.
But the people are now unemployed. Those with enough assets to do so have
already fled the cities forever, knowing they will find better opportunities
elsewhere. Those remaining are finding it hard to get gas for their cars,
have only sporadic electricity, and are finding themselves the victims of
water-borne disease (the government-run water treatment facilities have been
abandoned, on the assumption that the "Free Market" will take care of water
needs) and the recently freed criminals. Citizens loot the now-closed
stores, looking for food and things that they may be able to sell to ward
off the danger of their current unemployment.
At first, they protest in the streets, demanding a return of their jobs,
their water and electricity, and some federal money so the remnants of the
local construction companies can begin to rebuild their cities. But the
President orders his soldiers to suppress the demonstration, and soldiers
shoot and kill some of the protesters, finding it "impossible" to tell the
difference between "protesters" and "criminals."
The people fight back, shooting at the soldiers. The President declares
martial law, and in the background brings in John Negroponte, a black-ops
specialist who is alleged to have helped organize death squads in Central
America, to funnels guns and training to professional hit men to take out
those citizens of the two cities who may have any history of political
dissent. Within weeks, bodies of young men with their hands tied behind
their backs and bullets in the back of their heads begin to show up on the
streets.
The people of the surrounding regions - the rest of America - want to know
what the President is going to do for and about San Francisco and Detroit.
He says that the cities occupied by his military forces will soon be
pacified if we'll just give him a bit more time, more troops, and more tanks
and bullets. Discussion of the return of "normal" government - Medicaid,
Medicare, Social Security payments, free health care, public education,
water, electricity, and food stamps - are all absent from the news media,
which is owned by big corporations who agree with the President's belief
that the mythical "Free Market" will solve everything, eventually.
Meanwhile, people in Detroit and San Francisco are both fighting among
themselves and against the army. Black and white, Asian and Hispanic, rich
and poor - neighborhoods are creating their own militias to protect
themselves, and shooting on sight anybody who "looks different" who enters
their own territory. In the power vacuum created by the loss of government,
religious leaders emerge as the new power brokers, and churches and mosques
and synagogues become centers where people can find food, shelter, and an
authority figure who can resolve local disputes.
The President declares these local religious figures "insurgents" and orders
his military to find and arrest them. The military is meanwhile coming under
increasing attack from local people, pissed off that they are getting
progressively less and less water, electricity, and food. Two thirds of all
medical personnel have fled the cities, and the hospitals destroyed in the
tornado and earthquake have not been rebuilt.
Local contractors want to help out and put people back to work, but they are
forbidden from getting any federal monies. Their workers remain unemployed.
Meanwhile, the President hires some friends of his from Texas to go into
Detroit and San Francisco to rebuild the cities using out-of-town labor with
all the money going to his friends in Texas. The locals in SF and Detroit
resent this, and begin to shoot at the "contractors" as well.
The insurgency is now well under way. The President pleads with the American
people for another few billion dollars to pay for his military operation and
his Texas contractors. His generals talk about how they've pacified parts of
Grosse Point and Dearborn in Detroit and Nob Hill in San Francisco. The US
House and Senate are torn apart between a desire to pull out the soldiers -
who are dying in increasing numbers - and those who believe we must first
"pacify" the "insurgents" in Detroit and San Francisco. Unable to reach a
consensus, and with a general loyal to the President pushing for more time
and money to "pacify" Detroit and San Francisco, Congress votes another few
billion dollars and more time to the President.
Meanwhile, the President's advisors tell him that if he can just wait long
enough, the magical "Free Market" will solve all problems in Detroit and San
Francisco. Eventually, transnational corporations will see the huge and
cheap labor force in the cities - which are now totally impoverished - as an
asset. The 15% flat tax will bring prosperity. The privatization of Social
Security and medical services and schools will bring "opportunity" to the
people of the two cities. Just wait, it'll happen.
The only solution allowed for discussion is the military solution. After
all, we now have to "win back" Detroit and San Francisco. We have to kill
off those engaging in racial, religious, regional, or "sectarian" violence.
And, sure enough, as neighborhoods reorganize themselves by race and
ethnicity, as the young protesters are killed off, and the local religious
leaders take over the functions of government - providing education, health
care, and even food and safe water - the violence subsides in those
localities. The President claims these reductions in local violence are
"proof" that his military strategy to pacify Detroit and San Francisco is
"showing progress."
And so, for another year, the nation votes for more military funds, waiting
for the magical "free market" solution to take hold, forgetting the lesson
of 7000 years of city-state civilization that public services, progressive
taxes, and local government are necessary to a civil and functional society.
Sound eerily familiar? This is what the Republicans and the Bush
Administration did to Iraq (and partially did to New Orleans).
Lest you've forgotten, the main reason why the Bush Administration had no
"Plan B" for Iraq, no planning whatsoever for anything beyond the first 3
months after the successful war to knock down Saddam's government, is
because they instead had an economic plan.
Bush's old Andover Prep School roommate L. Paul Bremmer dissolved the 200
largest companies in Iraq, putting people out of work and putting the
companies up for sale to transnational corporations. The nation's
progressive income tax was replaced by a 15% flat tax. State-subsidized food
distribution was phased out, as was the Iraqi equivalent of Social Security
for both retirees and the disabled, widowed, or orphaned. State-subsidized
higher education was privatized. "Domestic content laws" that required Iraqi
labor or components in Iraqi-sold products were done away with; the doors
were thrown open to transnational corporations to take up to 100 percent of
their profits out of Iraq, and to import into Iraq their cheap-labor-made
products from outside the country. Labor unions were banned, and
transnationals could bring in cheap labor from outside the nation (no longer
"illegal immigrants" because laws on immigration for labor were done away
with), displacing Iraqi workers.
The response of the Iraqi people was to fight back. And the response by the
Republican True Believers in the mythical "Free Market" was to use the only
tool they believe government should have - the military.
Now we're asking if the military will "win or lose" in Iraq.
It's the wrong question.
Instead, we should be asking: When we're going to do in Iraq what we did in
Europe after war destroyed that continent? When are we going to begin a "big
government" solution, empower labor, raise taxes on the rich to reinstate
social welfare programs for the poor, and protect local industries with
tariffs and domestic content laws (like the Chinese and Japanese use)?
Only when these things begin will we really see "victory" in Iraq, if
"victory" means a functioning and independent nation.
But because such things are a total repudiation of
Republican/Rubin-Greenspan-Clinton/conservative economic and political
doctrine, odds are that the real questions we should be asking won't even be
raised until there is a new President here in the United States.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson