"War on terror"- coins a sacred phrase in the Iraq crusade. Karl Rove, high priest of spin, led the neocons' faithful choir through the doctrinal hymns, especially regarding Bush's military mission.
Now the Sanctified Church of Later Day Neocons has anointed John McCain to take the pulpit for the steadfast congregation, a political party led as if on a mission from God, bowing down to corporate avarice at the detriment of public interests.
Except for Secretary of State Rice "the ex-oil executive automaton." this special cabal of wealthy, white codgers has woven a web of myths so thick that everyone believes the country is divided between the red and the blue: the virtuous, righteous party versus the diabolical, liberal socialists. Behind the neocon marketing hype, the issues draw a real line between rich and poor and the economic policies that shove the poor deeper into debtor's slavery while the wealthy reap the profits from the uneducated, gullible middle class. At least twenty percent of Americans still believe that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks and that they pay less taxes than Europeans who enjoy high quality public healthcare and education through university level.
An enlightened saint among the neocons, Milton Friedman claimed that unregulated industries operated most efficiently. Contrary to this twaddle, we have witnessed how unbridled Savings and Loan banks imploded under Bush Sr. in the early 90's. Corporations can and will destroy themselves by greedy feeding frenzies as we watched in the scandals like Enron and Anderson Consulting. Lack of government intervention, a lack of political will and leadership in America generally allows this trend to continue. Once the Berlin Wall fell, hollow winds blew through the streets of Soviet Union's communist ideals and gave the captains of industry free reign to practice arrogant forms of unrestrained capitalism at the high costs of public interests.
After disastrous Reaganomics were implemented, Bush Sr. became president, campaigning on a promise to reduce taxes which he later increased in a desperate attempt to reduce Reagan's inflamed deficit, and pushed Friedman policies, voodoo economics, further, allowing certain industries to gorge on consumers' savings accounts, wolves on meek lambs. Bush Sr. cooled the corporate feeding frenzy that turned into a blood bath by paying over $120 billion in public tax funds to bail out the Savings & Loan crisis in the early 1990's. So, rather than maintain a Keynesian mixed economy in which government calms corporate passions for profits, the neocon doctrine allows industries to devour gullible consumers until streets are red with blood. Only then does government intervene by giving industries a transfusion of tax payers' money.
America's government has become a mere socialized emergency room for industries that overdose on the crack cocaine of greed. Tax payers now pay industries to cure them of their own addiction to larger and larger profits and executive salaries.
As if ambitious to outdo dad, President Bush Jr. drove Milton Friedman's free-wheeling economic policies like a freight train on a downward spiraling track until it finally crashed into the limits of melting consumer credit cards and fraudulent, bloated mortgage loans. Bush Jr.'s administration will hand out hundreds of billions of tax dollars to subsidize the mismanagement of credit card and mortgage banks while their CEO's carry their multimillion dollar paychecks to the bank laughing all the way. Meanwhile middle class workers lose their homes at a neck-breaking rate.
In so far as incompetent politicians sell their souls to corporate contributions and voodoo economics, and consequently mislead this country into destruction and mayhem, the guerrilla Islamist warriors, like Osama bin Laden, are accurate in assessing the US as corrupt and decadent.
McCain's campaign promises continue the neoconservative holy crusade for the Iraq War which directly affects the economy. The differences between Obama and McCain are blatantly clear. Whatever McCain says about the economic fiascos of the mortgage crisis, the credit card crisis, or the Iraq War, Obama has an opposite view.
The 2008 election is about diametrically opposing views between the Keynesian versus the Friedmaniac policies. In 2008, we also choose between the neocon codgers' imperial war to impose corporate status quo over a sovereign nation for the sake of its oil reserves versus the innovative solutions in regulated commerce in healthcare, banking, energy, and war.
Corporate Campaign Contributions--Industrial Domination
Tied to the unparalleled power of the Israeli lobby money and to the huge corporate defense and energy contractors, Bush and his cabinet have been operating only in terms of conventional warfare. Influenced by corporate campaign money, they only think in terms of corporate interests.
This involves no bid contracts and the use of expensive, sophisticated weaponry that applies best to the warfare of one sovereign nation against another, and not to guerilla warfare. In other words, the political church of Bush and McCain is less interested in armor to protect the individual soldiers on the ground, fighting house to house. That sort of activity represents social welfare to individual human beings, brave soldiers. Armor for body and Humvee hardly increases profit margins in comparison to a billion dollar B-52 bomber.
Following Bush's footsteps, McCain embraces this same agenda. If Bush says, "stay the course in Iraq," McCain says, "stay there a hundred years." If Bush says timetable to pull out, McCain dittos the Anointed Decider. McSame has developed his economic and war policies from his ties with big business lobbies and not with the interest of the American people. Like Bush, McCain abides by unregulated big business as indoctrinated by Milton Friedman since the Reagan years.
This is the reason why Bush invaded Iraq, a sovereign nation. "It's just business," as he would say, "nothin' pers'nal."- He could have pointed his finger at any piece of fresh meat and the American people were eagerly drooling to revenge the 9/11 attack. The golden opportunity, the casus belli,a perfect justification for war arrived. The neocons knew exactly which war to wage, the low-hanging fruit of the world's second largest oil reserves.
The neocons had long ago planned to knock off Saddam Hussein since the day he nationalized Iraqi oil. They have well documented this fact. Take a look at PNAC. It's always been about the oil and a drive for global dominance backed by a fanatical Judeo-Christian fundamentalism. We cannot act too surprised when former Fed Chairman Allen Greenspan explained as much in his biography after he left his cushy government job where he practiced the Milton Friedman rituals devoutly in his bathtub, enlightened by flickering candles.
Invading Iraq made great financial and political sense at least for Dubya and his Friedman disciples from Podhoretz to Falwell. Defense and petroleum contractors made boatloads of profits, thus fattening the coffers for Bush's 2004 campaign. Beyond campaign money, the Bush family, as well as members of its neocon church--including Cheney, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and so on--own millions in stock of defense contractors and petroleum companies such as the Carlyle Group and a long list of others. Cheney's stock options at Halliburton skyrocketed, once the company landed those no-bid billion dollar contracts. Unless you've read up on this subject, you wouldn't recognize the names of these companies, except for maybe the ones that advertise regularly on TV like Exxon, Boeing, Lockhead." By paying for multi-million dollar ads, they were able to stifle freedom of media journalism for at least as long as it took to get Neil Cavuto, poppa-bear Bill O'Reilly, and Wolf Blitzer a whoring chance to sway public opinion to wage an imperial, conventional war against a loosely organized network of guerrilla fundamentalists.
Waging Conventional War Is Good for Re-elections
Bush desperately needed to increase his plummeting popularity score after the Supreme Court appointed him to the presidency by overturning the 2000 election. He could only win a second term in office if he initiated a major war against a well defined country. Iraq was a ripe target with an army impoverished by decades of sanctions. US history shows that no president has lost a second term election after declaring a war in the first term. Now the same scenario plays out for opportunist, citizen McCain who playfully sings his own song, "Bomb Iran."
This is how the American industrial military complex works. It's become a cookie cutter process for presidents since the Mexican American War when the Thornton Skirmish arose between the U.S. and Mexican militaries, handing President Polk a justification of war against Mexico in 1846. The sinking of the USS Maine gave Teddy Roosevelt a trumped up reason for the Spanish American War just as the Tokin incident helped justify the Vietnam War.
This is how the American industrial military complex has operated at least since the Mexican American War (1846). President Eisenhower knew this and warned us about it. The general public, the unschooled masses repeatedly jump on the bandwagon for nationalistic pride, all too willing to take a blind patriotic ride to hell while all the way handing the pillaged profits to the robber barons of war. Is there a cure for the American middle class's credulity? Well, everyone could turn off the boob tube and read some books other than the Bible. In France and Germany, they've developed a remedy to some extent. It's called a damn good secular public education system, one that does not muddle science and reason with religious poppycock like creationism, End Days, and the holy lands.
Guerrilla Warriors, Not Iraqi Armies
There's a little problem, though. The groups, and that's "groups plural" which perpetrate terrorist activities in the name of Allah are non-conventional warriors. They harbor loyalty to no sovereign nation but to a fundamentalist creed similar to White Supremists or the 700 Club. The US military could never bomb the terrorist groups involved in attacking US and European cities. The US could never invade any one country and expect its leaders to surrender and end the "war on terrorism."
If attacking any main source of the trouble makers would solve the problem, then they would have to bomb Saudi Arabia because 15 of the 19 terrorists were born, raised, and indoctrinated there. The Devine Decider didn't invade Saudi Arabia for the simple reason that, unlike Saddam Hussein, the royal family of Saud are long term allies and reliable petroleum suppliers since Franklin Roosevelt made the deal with King Saud in 1945, essentially saying, "We'll support and protect your monarchy so long as you deliver the crude."
The American industrial military complex makes less money in the labor intensive guerrilla wars than they do in wars that require sophisticated, manufactured weaponry. It's basic business strategy to maintain high profits--to hell with the reasons for the outcomes of the war. Defense contractors earn much smaller profits in guerrilla warfare which requires labor intensive work in urban settings with ears to the ground. In his books, Baer makes this a central argument. Using bombers, sophisticated equipment, missiles,...it's the only thing that makes business sense.
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