National security. National security is a bit harder for the average person to understand. The rapid spread of U.S. military bases throughout the Mideast and Central Asia (castles literally and figuratively built on sand), the endless military victories in every "face-to-face encounter between the world's most high-tech force and 19th century insurgents, the dramatic media portrayals of the day's little troop surge, and dominant position in national debate of stern-faced generals calling for more war (because the generals opposing war seem to get themselves sacked and then blacklisted by the compliant media) all give the impression that "whatever Washington may be doing to the rest of the world "at least U.S. national security is being well defended.
Unfortunately, those foreign bases are like the dikes around New Orleans: imposing structures but not designed for the job. Those bases would have stopped Stalin's late-1940s push into Iran cold; they would have stopped the Soviet 1978 invasion of Afghanistan cold. And they would serve marvelously as launching pads for regional aggression or "protection of pipelines. But in the context of Iraq or Afghanistan, they are recruitment posters for al Qua'ida.
Washington's behavior--its aggressive policy of base expansions, threats, and preventive wars; its unwillingness to take the time for understanding or negotiation; its relative lack of concern for supporting the development of civil society; its lack of tolerance for Muslim actors who advocate real independence; its insistence on discriminatory rules that excuse its allies and punish its adversaries; and its endless commission of blatant acts of injustice "all serve to undermine U.S. national security by provoking hostility, undermining trust, weakening its moral leadership, and throwing its mutually antagonistic opponents into each other's arms. The financial strain of profligate tactics in a military adventure that spills from one front to another, with the fires of old battles still smoking even as it fans the flames of new ones, further weakens U.S. national security.
The bases, the surges, the endless expensive high-tech conflict all do have one undeniable characteristic, however: they are very good for business. Blackwater, by whatever name, is doing a booming business running a mercenary army outside of Congressional control, and the need for weapons and machinery and construction is endless.
So for the elite, these four critical national problems that are as plain as day to citizens simply do not exist. The state of health care, the state of the financial system, the state of the environment, and the state of national security are, for the rich and powerful, not problems but opportunities. Speaking in another era about a different issue, in his series of 1858 debates with Steven Douglas, Lincoln criticized Douglas' defense of racism as "blowing out the moral lights around us, eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty in this American people [as quoted in Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals, 207]. Lincoln argued that the "real issue was "the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle [208].
The self-serving attitude of the U.S. ruling elite that provokes endless but profitable war, impoverishes workers, denies citizens even a minimal universal health care safety net, and despoils the environment for short-term gain is blowing out the moral light of equality that the Declaration of Independence shined upon the unifying 13 colonies. In its place comes the pattern of privilege for some and punishment for others, a pattern seen in U.S. relations with other countries and in elite relations with the American people. Lincoln hit the nail on its head with his comment that "You"earn bread, and I'll eat it.
Many problems in life are unfortunate situations that man must learn to cope with. It is important to remember that the state of U.S. health care, finances, the environment, and national security result from choices intentionally made by the ruling elite. The critical problems in all four arenas do not result from nature or foreign enemies; we Americans did it to ourselves. More specifically, the elite did it for private purposes while the rest of us were out at the mall.
The rich are surely deluding themselves if they imagine that their exploitative behavior can endure endlessly, but there is little reason to think that they are worrying much about the lives their children will live: the view of the complacent is a short-term one. As far as their own personal prospects are concerned, on the other hand, the rich tend to know exactly what they are doing.
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