Have we learned nothing?
We pause this morning, while the rest of the world contemplates Mr. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and this week’s pending machinations of the Fed and OPEC, to ponder matters geopolitical.
There’s something extremely telling about the reaction to the reporter who flung his shoes at That Lame Duck in the White House. And it doesn’t bode well for the next four years under the new president.
Something significant was missing from the main account of the incident, be it from the Associated Press or Reuters.
But McClatchy Newspapers (its pitiful financial state notwithstanding) got the real story. “Friends said Zaidi covered the U.S. bombing of Baghdad’s Sadr City area earlier this year and had been ‘emotionally influenced’ by the destruction he’d seen,” says its reporter in Baghdad.
This salient fact was otherwise missing from establishment media coverage.
If after nearly six years of war in Iraq, two of which were marked by public disillusionment, and three more by public disgust, most establishment media still can’t see how ordinary folk in distant lands are transformed by U.S. foreign policy into opponents of the U.S. government, what does that bode for the coming “surge” in Afghanistan?
Or, stated more simply, have we learned nothing?
As Steve Clemons noted over the weekend, there’s a growing bipartisan consensus that Afghanistan is “the good war” in contrast to Iraq. Certainly that’s the impression the new president conveyed throughout the campaign.
From bipartisan consensus usually springs horrible policy, devised hastily — e.g., the bailout of the money-shuffling class. Has anyone who supports this coming “surge” articulated who exactly the enemy is? Didn’t think so. How this enemy will be pursued and defeated? Didn’t think so. What resources should be devoted to achieving this objective to avoid Iraq- and Vietnam-style escalation? Didn’t think so.
The bombing of a supply convoy a week ago is truly an ill omen. There’s just one slender supply line for U.S. and NATO forces stretching from Karachi up through Pakistan and through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.
No wonder Clemons worries, as a friend wrote him, that Afghanistan might turn out to be “the place where the dreams and hopes of the Obama Presidency are buried.” An Empire of Debt, crashing and burning on the rocks of insolvency and the Hindu Kush.
Just like the Russians in the 1980s.
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The plebes will never learn. There are simply too few who will look under the rocks or simply attempt to understand what it is we’re doing as a nation. It’s going to have to get worse — much worse — before the majority rolls up with the guillotines.
Comment on December 15, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
Boring. You need to write about financial stuff. Or are you just a one trick pony that can’t think of anything new to write about in the financial arena? Buy gold Buy silver, it’s the end of civilization! THe dollar is doomed. First deflation then inflation…….I guess there’s only so many times you can write the same thing.
Your loyal reader
Comment on December 15, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
Breaking News? Broke News is more like it.
I see “Ponzi scheme” on CNN, et al; too late as usual.
“The human heart is desperately wicked. Who can know it?” - my second favorite quote from the Bible.
Comment on December 16, 2008 @ 10:27 am
Aha; someone else who’s noted the Afghanistan buildup plans with disdain. Yeah, you’d *think* Obama would recognize Afghanistan as the Graveyard of Empires.
Google “graveyard of empires” and you get almost 2 million hits. The first page of which is entirely references to Afghanistan.
In a lot of ways, Afghanistan is a WORSE place to be than Iraq. Our leaders are fools at best, and cynical war profiteers at worst, and I wash my hands of them.
Comment on December 16, 2008 @ 12:52 pm
Financial tip: wheres all the tarp going? I live in a far flung province.Recently G.E.Money recieved 139 b dollears from TARP.This week my wife has bought a new dishwasher and a new washing machine. Both made in Europe.Both financed by G.E.money Don’t worry. Be happy. Girls are going to save the world.
Comment on December 17, 2008 @ 12:43 am
Well, if they wage wars in foreign countries with counterfeit money (albeit by the Fed’s printing presses), maybe they will just as soon do it to the foreign country the US is rapidly becoming? Got to be some “Baltic” states around here, somewhere… Are we asking the second most important question regarding all this perpetual war and empire building waged, allegedly, in the pursuit of perpetual peace? “With what money?” The first? “And congress declared this war because…?” The rogues have even refused an audit of our money’s trail! “Audacity, audacity… always audacity (Robespierre)!”
Comment on December 17, 2008 @ 2:04 am