This was first posted as a reply to Patrick Lang’s diary Re-Training Support People?, a military eye’s view of the rumor that one way the BushCo people and their few remaining pet generals are going to try to maintain a physical presence in the Middle East if to “retrain” support specialists and let them take over heretofore semi-combat tasks such as perimeter guard duty, etc.
Col. Lang thinks that this a bad idea.
Me too, except that I think it will never come to that. Not in any broad way, at least.
Frankly, I quite seriously think that we are facing the distinct possibility of (another) covert coup d’état of some sort before these kinds of things are extensively implemented. (JFK, Nixon and Clinton being the previous three. With Carter’s “Crash In The Desert” and Clinton’s sex sting being close relatives.)
THAT was what so troubled the administration about Jack Murtha’s public change of heart, and that was also why they so quickly backed off of their original offensive against him when they realized for whom he was speaking. They are under the gun. Neither side of this standoff in Washington wishes to abandon Iraq to chaos, but they disagree on the tactics that should be used to forestall that from happening.
The REAL problem is that neither side is seeing the bigger picture, and this is a problem that might have no possible resolution. We have gone so deeply into economic imperialism and dependence of foreign oil that I am sure the movers and shakers think that this country and its economy would literally fall apart under the pressure that would ensue if we left the Middle East to its own devices and the depredations of OTHER superpowers.
And they may just be right.
Read on…
But the alternative…a constant war against an ever stronger Third World that outnumbers us 4 to 1…is equally bad if not worse.
I see only one possible hope, and it is a slim one because:
1-It would require an effort from the American people that would have to equal or surpass that of W.W.II, and I am not at all convinced that we have the backbone for it anymore.
Maybe…maybe not…
and
2-The people who control this country…the PermaGov…are not willing to take that chance or even apparently consider it. I say this because there is no major, likely candidate for office right now who is saying anything resembling “OK. That’s it. OUT of the economic imperialism game. Time to tighten our belts, even if it means rationing for 5 years or even more. Time to regain our own self-reliance. Time to find new ways to conserve energy and new ways to produce it. Time for a new austerity. We are drawing back, and we will defend ourselves from further incursions on OUR territory by any means necessary, up to and including nuclear retaliation. You have been warned. We will not fuck with you anymore, but God HELP you if you continue to fuck with us.”
However, in a country where people are trampled in shopping riots….I dunno…
And neither do they. If “they” did think this…if a sufficient number of the people who hold the real money here were of this opinion…then there would be a major candidate with major financing (synonyms really, those two ideas) saying this in public. But they have been hoist by their own dumbing down petard, and now have a population that may very well be too media and market stupefied to be ABLE to mount such an effort.
Live by the dumb, die by the dumb.
It’s an obvious alternate strategy, and I am quite sure that it has been gamed at the highest levels. My belief is that it WOULD work, and my further belief is that the gaming and planning is being done by (conscious and unconscious) racists and classists who FAR underestimate the capabilities of minority Americans…including the working white lower middle class and poor.
However…here we are.
Overtly discussing ways to continue our dominance of the Middle East without being driven insolvent, which is beyond a shadow of a doubt the basic tactic that our enemies are now using against us.
And covertly…bet on it…discussing how to get rid of this administration by any means necessary because they are about to completely break this system if they continue on their present course and they show no signs of understanding the mistakes that they have made so far.
Have fun…
And may you be born into interesting times.
Fasten your seat belts.
It’s going to be a rough ride.
AG
Tips and stuff?
(Austerity be damned.)
AG
Interesting diary. “Are we up for it?” I don’t know (still mulling it over before I vote in the poll). I’m not sure we’re going to get a choice in the matter, though. The window of opportunity for investing in alternative energy sources is closing rapidly, and we haven’t done squat. (If we were a nation of rational people, we’d have been working steadily on the problem since the Carter administration. Or maybe I should say a nation with rational leaders…)
And I’m sure they had such high hopes for the Cheney administration, given that he’s one of them, and has been groomed for this moment since the Nixon years. Not that any weak sentimentality shall be shown him when the final push comes to shove.
They don’t need to read Ayn Rand – they live it.
Al Queda plans to defeat us by disrupting our economy and making us abandon the principles that are the soul of the nation for the illusion of safety: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ~Benjamin Franklin (of all the founding fathers, the one who could most easily make sense out of the world of today were he to suddenly find himself transported here). And things are going exactly according to plan, so far.
We’ll know that we’re finally screwed but good when we find out that major fortunes are quietly being moved to nother nations and that the up and coming generation of engineers and scientists are going to grad school in other nations as well. Hmmm – the second part of that is already happening; anyone know about the first part (I don’t travel in those circles myself)?
Adapt to not being THE superpower anymore? It took England at least 50 years and 1 or 2 world wars. I don’t see any reason to expect our ride to be any less bumpy. It will wrench this nation like the Depression and Civil War did.
The glide path to a softer landing would have been major investment in new energy sources a generation ago, but we pissed that chance away. Now we’re going to be stuck with Fischer-Tropsch coal conversion technology: “Damn the planet; I’ve got a lot of money tied up in this Hummer!”
Anecdotal evidence I admit, but I have had several extremely wealthy clients…as in “more money than god” types…the last several years for whom I’ve designed 100% off-grid, independent residential compounds. These compounds are completely self-sufficient energy and utility wise using readily available, although quite expensive, technology. To date, the majority of them have been in Mexico, but they and their friends appear to be branching out. (see #4 below)
These people have several interesting things in common:
Without exception these people are very well educated, extremely intelligent and, for the most part, liberal politically. They are obviously disillusioned with the direction the country is taking and in one case, have sent their children to Europe for University.
Methinks they know something the sheeple don’t and are securing alternate options should it get really ugly.
As I said at the beginning, strictly my interpretation of anecdotal evidence.
Buckling up doesn’t sound like a bad idea, IMHO.
Peace
Do the majority of these new fortunes involve the sale of technology patents and other rights? Any idea of how many involved the Carlyle group or other private equity firms?
I saw in an article where Cheney’s new private compound has restricted/controlled airspace, even when no one is home.
Maybe.
The difference between the U.S. and Great Britain is one of degree, though.
We have SO much more in terms of resources within our own borders. As long as the union holds here we DO have a chance to become self-sufficient in a way that Great Britain never did. (Resources including sheer mass of population.) However, the chances of the United States remaining as a cohesive whole, as one nation, is itself an iffy proposition when you get right down to it. If the blue and red states were all fairly contiguous with one another, there would be secession in the air by now, I think. If things did not change, at least by 2008 or 2009.
And as far as the window for investing in alternative energy resources…well, a REAL austerity program would reopen that window. Wide. Energy rationing. You would see those SUVs disappear from the roads overnight. You would see Detroit completely revitalized as it geared up to produce minis. You would see people finally insulating their building correctly and turning out the lights when they left the room. People carpooling. Mass transit revitalized by the revenues from sheer usage. Rail travel revitalized. Do you know…can it even be GUESSED…how much energy is wasted by the unsupervised (“It’s for national SECURITY, dude!!!”) armed forces? How much sheer fuel it takes to keep our naval and air forces in a position to strike if the iron gets TOO hot here at home and some fool blows up half of Chicago with a suitcase bomb some day? Can the sheer waste of products being duplicated in the name of “competition” be calculated? How many different pop tarts or corn flakes or toothpastes do you NEED? How far back could we step from the edge of the precipice upon which we now find ourselves balanced if we pulled back from the media-forced (media enforced) consumer system in which we now live our daily lives?
So the only question remains, really…do we have the substance to DO this.
And therein lies the rub.
I think that we do.
And further, I think that we have the media and propaganda tools TO do it. To sell this idea to the American people. I mean. hell…if you can sell them George W. Butch and ’80s/’90s GM/Ford/Chrysler cars, you can pretty damned well sell them ANYTHING, when you get right down to it.
But we do not have the leaders. The REAL leaders. (Read real money people.) It is THEY who are suffering a failure of vision, and I believe that this failure is racially (and to some degree culturally) driven. I have watched these people from the bandstand all of my life. I watched them again last night in NYC at a VERY high level international diplomatic party. All sables and minks, not a brain in a carload.
Nasty.
Then I took a late night subway home to the Bronx. 1 AM in the morning there were more aware, capable people in the one car in which I sat than there were in the whole ballroom in which I had just worked, barring the help. (Including the musicians in that “help” category.department. “The artist is the elite of the servant class.” G. B. Shaw. Yup.)
So it goes.
We shall see.
I’ll tell you this…we will either have to reform or go down, because we simply CANNOT continue to successfully travel on the road we are now following. It ends up at the edge of a nuclear cliff, and it is all downhill from there.
Bet on it.
Later…
AG
The resources do us little good if we don’t own them. That’s the danger that’s also faced in the drive to privatize utilities here and in other countries.
I agree in the failure of vision but it’s been vision for the people(country’s future) that’s failed.
We have been slowly sold out to global interests by those who were only looking out for themselves.
Thanks for the reality check. You do raise some good points to help balance me out. I must have been having an “Eeyore moment.”
I’d reference something more profound than Winnie-the-Pooh, but the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet this morning.
Check out my new diary for more upthought in this general direction if you have a mind to. And if the caffeine is working.
I just didn’t know.” America’s cop-out is about to run out. And just in time, too.
Later…
AG
We need both- a coup d’etat to get rid of this criminal Administration and some kind of REAL energy development plan.
If you have been following Larry Johnson’s blog, or seen Sydney Blumenthals latest article in “Salon”, then you know Cheney and Rumsfeld have been working for oil companies, big pharma and military weapons companies for the last 30+ years. Of course this violates their oath of office for the years they were IN government. But they did not deviate even when not in government. In fact take a look at the Board of Directors for the Carlyle Group-a consortium of Military Industrial Companies – link below: I do not think any of you will be surprised.
http://www.hereinreality.com/carlyle.html
If our congress EVER does its job, I believe they will find that the Cheney/ Rumsfeld cabal have played huge behind the scenes parts in:
The Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal needs to go NOW- we cannot afford even 6 more months of their “management” skills. Perhaps if everyone calls and writes congress weekly, we may finally get rid of these really bad actors.
As to a severe austerity plan – I do not think it has to be so drastic. Actually several things have happened over the last couple of decades where I think we are that far off from having alternative fuels.
I have faith in American ingenuity if supported and not constrained by special interests. We can do it! Look at the plan for coal conversion that Montana’s Governor Schweitzer has developed. Even Jerome A Paris thinks it is feasible and well thought out.
The biggest obstacle in our path is the Cabal now in power. Once we start tackling that, the leaders we need will emerge. Look at Harry Reid. How many of us thought he’d be as good as he is in January 2005?
Good old American ingenuity will do it, with some bumps in the road, but it will not be as sever as total austerity. If we get rid of our problem people, I am sure we can actually “buy” energy until then.
My biggest concern is that we may be stopped by the what is called the Bilderberg group – a secret cadre of financiers, politicians and power brokers from around the world. At brief description is at the link below:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3773019.stm
Governor Warner from Virgina was the secret invited guest from America this year. I read it at “Online Journal”, but the links must be archived and I do not know how to get them. Anyway, according to Online Journal, this group informed Warner they expected him to come up with NEW wealth, not just redistributed existing wealth. This has haunted me, as shortly after American retirement plans started to disappear. According to what I read, If Warner agrees to play ball with the, then they will make him the next president of the USA. This could undercut our moving toward an energy independent future.
“Permanent Government”
Much better than alternatives like “the real government” or the “shadow government.” Gets to the real point: No matter how much you change the Government, the Permanent Government does not change, and still sets the political agenda. And in truth, it is neither shadowy nor real. It is just permanent, and as such does not much like attention nor people getting in its way.
“Live by the dumb; die by the dumb.”
Our epitaph.
Your poll is an example of built-in poll bias. I voted yes, of course. Yet their is still no evidence Americans will willingly give up their SUVs.
We are going all the way to the bottom. That is not the problem. The problem is, nobody knows where the bottom is, only that it is deeper than we think.
This makes it very hard to plan for.
Hi Gaianne. Hip name. You ARE a bon mot!
I answered part of this comment in another post. I am more optimistic that are you. Read the diary to see why, if you are interested.
“I just didn’t know.” America’s cop-out is about to run out. And just in time, too..
As far as the poll goes…it was of course meant to be a joke…
Later…
AG