It didn't take the Israel Lobby very long to bring
President Obama to heel regarding his prohibition against further illegal
Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Obama discovered that a mere
American president is powerless when confronted by the Israel Lobby and that the United States simply
is not allowed a Middle East policy separate from Israel's.
Obama also found out that he cannot change anything
else either, if he ever intended to do so. The military/security lobby has war and a domestic
police state on its agenda, and a mere American president can't do anything
about it.
President Obama can order the Guantanamo torture
chamber closed and kidnapping and rendition and torture to be halted, but no one
carries out the order.
Essentially, Obama is irrelevant.
President Obama can promise that he is going to
bring the troops home, and the military lobby says, "No, you are going to send
them to Afghanistan, and in the meantime start a war in Pakistan and maneuver
Iran into a position that will provide an excuse for a war there, too. Wars are too
profitable for us to let you stop them. And the mere president has to say, "Yes,
Sir!
Obama can promise health care to 50 million
uninsured Americans, but he can't override the veto of the war lobby and the
insurance lobby. The war lobby says its war profits are more important than
health care and that the country can't afford both the "war on terror and
"socialized medicine.
The insurance lobby says health care has to be
provided by private health insurance; otherwise, we can't afford it.
The war and insurance lobbies rattled their campaign
contribution pocketbooks and quickly convinced Congress and the White House that
the real purpose of the health care bill is to save money by cutting Medicare
and Medicaid benefits, thereby "getting entitlements under
control.
Entitlements is a right-wing word used to cast
aspersion on the few things that the government did, in the distant past, for
citizens. Social Security and Medicare, for example, are denigrated as
"entitlements. The right-wing goes on endlessly about Social Security and
Medicare as if they were welfare give-aways to shiftless people who refuse to
look after themselves, whereas in actual fact citizens are vastly overcharged
for the meager benefits with a 15% tax on their wages and
salaries.
Indeed, for decades now the federal government has
been funding its wars and military budgets with the surplus revenues collected
by the Social Security tax on labor.
To claim, as the right-wing does, that we can't
afford the only thing in the entire budget that has consistently produced a
revenue surplus indicates that the real agenda is to drive the mere citizen into
the ground.
The real entitlements are never mentioned. The
"defense budget is an entitlement for the military/security complex about which
President Eisenhower warned us 50 years ago. A person has to be crazy to
believe that the United States, "the world's only superpower, protected by
oceans on its East and West and by puppet states on its North and South, needs a
"defense budget larger than the military spending of the rest of the world
combined.
The military budget is nothing but an entitlement
for the military/security complex. To hide this fact, the entitlement is
disguised as protection against "enemies and passed through the Pentagon.
I say cut out the middleman and simply allocate a
percentage of the federal budget to the military/security complex. This way we
won't have to concoct reasons for invading other countries and go to war in
order for the military/security complex to get its entitlement. It would be a
lot cheaper just to give them the money outright, and it
would save a lot of lives and grief at home and
abroad.
The US invasion of Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do
with American national interests. It had to do with armaments profits and with
eliminating an obstacle to Israeli territorial expansion. The cost of the war,
aside from the $3 trillion, was over 4,000 dead Americans, over 30,000 wounded
and maimed Americans, tens of thousands of broken American marriages and lost
careers, one million dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, and a destroyed
country.
All of this was done for the profits of the
military/security complex and to make paranoid Israel, armed with 200 nuclear
weapons, feel "secure.
My proposal would make the military/security complex
even more wealthy as the companies would get the money without having to produce
the weapons. Instead, all the money could go for multi-million dollar bonuses
and dividend payouts to shareholders. No one, at home or abroad, would have to
be killed, and the taxpayer would be better off.
No American national interest is served by the war
in Afghanistan. As the former UK Ambassador Craig Murray disclosed, the purpose
of the war is to protect Unocal's interest in the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.
The cost of the war is many times greater than Unocal's investment in the
pipeline. The obvious solution is to buy out Unocal and give the pipeline to
the Afghans as partial compensation for the destruction we have inflicted on
that country and its population, and bring the troops home.
The reason my sensible solutions cannot be effected
is that the lobbies think that their entitlements would not survive if they were
made obvious. They think that if the American people knew that the wars were
being fought to enrich the armaments and oil industries, the people would put a
halt to the wars.
In actual fact, the American people have no say
about what "their government does. Polls of the public show that half or more
of the American people do not support the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan and do not
support President Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Yet, the
occupations and wars continue. According to General Stanley McChrystal, the
additional 40,000 troops are enough to stalemate the war, that is, to keep in
going forever, the ideal situation for the armaments lobby.
The people want health care, but the government does
not listen.
The people want jobs, but Wall Street wants higher
priced stocks and forces American firms to offshore the jobs to countries where
labor is cheaper.
The American people have no effect on anything.
They can affect nothing. They have become irrelevant like Obama. And they will
remain irrelevant as long as organized interest groups can purchase the US
government.
The inability of the American democracy to produce
any results that the voters want is a demonstrated fact. The total
unresponsiveness of government to the people is conservatism's contribution to
American democracy. Some years ago there was an effort to put government back
into the hands of the people by constraining the ability of organized interest
groups to pour enormous amounts of money into political campaigns and, thus,
obligate the elected official to those whose money elected him. Conservatives
said that any restraints would be a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee
of free speech.
The same "protectors of "free speech had no
objection to the Israel Lobby's passage of the "hate speech bill, which has
criminalized criticism of Israel's genocidal treatment of the Palestinians and
continuing theft of their lands.
In less than one year, President Obama has betrayed
all of his supporters and broken all of his promises. He is the total captive
of the oligarchy of the ruling interest groups.
Unless he is saved by an orchestrated 9/11-type
event, Obama is a one-term president.
Indeed, the collapsing economy will doom him
regardless of a "terrorist event.
The Republicans are grooming Palin. Our first
female president, following our first black president, will complete the
transition to an American police state by arresting critics and protesters of
Washington's immoral foreign and domestic policies, and she will complete the
destruction of America's reputation abroad.
Russia's Putin has already compared the US to Nazi
Germany, and the Chinese premier has likened the US to an irresponsible,
profligate debtor.
Increasingly the rest of the world sees the US as
the sole source of all of its problems. Germany has lost the chief of its armed
forces and its defense minister, because the US convinced or pressured, by hook
or crook, the German government to violate its Constitution and to send troops
to fight for Unocal's interest in Afghanistan. The Germans had pretended that
their troops were not really fighting, but were were engaged in a "peace-keeping
operation. This more or less worked until the Germans called in an air strike
that murdered 100 women and children lined up for a fuel allotment.
The British are investigating their leading
criminal, former prime minister Tony Blair, and his deception of his own cabinet
in order to do Bush's bidding and provide some cover for Bush's illegal invasion
of Iraq. The UK investigators have been denied the ability to bring criminal
charges, but the issue of war based entirely on orchestrated deception and lies
is getting a hearing. It will reverberate throughout the world, and the world
will note that there is no corresponding investigation in the US, the country
that originated the False War.
Meanwhile, the US investment banks, which have
wrecked the financial stability of many governments, including that of the US,
continue to control, as they have done since the Clinton administration, US
economic and financial policy. The world has suffered terribly from the Wall
Street gangsters, and now looks upon America with a
critical eye.
The United States no longer commands the respect it
enjoyed under President Ronald Reagan or President George Herbert Walker Bush.
World polls show that the US and its puppet master are regarded as the two
greatest threats to peace. Washington and Israel outrank on the most dangerous
list the crazy regime in North Korea.
The world is beginning to see America as a country
that needs to go away. When the dollar is over-inflated by a Washington unable
to pay its bills, will the world be motivated by greed and try to save us in
order to save its investments, or will it say, thank God, good
riddance.
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