Spending ourselves into oblivion

[trof]

In the mid 1980s I attended a seminar at Yale University entitled "International Security and World Order". It was during a morning panel discussion by Yale's Political Science Department professors that I finally understood our foreign policy toward the then U.S.S.R. We would simply outspend them on "defense" and weapons systems.

According to these bright (and surprisingly young) men, it didn't really matter if the systems were particularly effective, as long as the Russians believed they MIGHT be. By spending more and more, we would force them to spend more and more. What I have called "The Poker Game Analogy" was that the Soviet Union would bankrupt itself before we did. Back then it was seen as a tight race, and there was a risk that we might not have enough chips to call the last bet, however various projections indicated that we would win by a whisker. These predictions turned out to be accurate.

Now we know that the so called "missile gap" was bogus, a highly effective program of disinformation by the Russian military and the KGB. Unfortunately for them, the Rule of Unintended Consequences came into play and their bluff ultimately caused their downfall.

What reminded me of this was a AP headline I saw at the USA TODAY website:
"Analysis: Only U.S. can damage self majorly despite bin Laden
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-12-18-bin-laden_x.htm?csp=34

Osama bin Laden claims to have bled the Soviet Union into bankruptcy as an Islamic guerrilla fighter in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Could he do the same to another hated superpower — the United States?
The al-Qaeda leader's latest purported communication drove home the point by calling on militants to stop the flow oil to the West and praising a Dec. 6 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil producer."

"Go on and try to prevent them from getting oil," the speaker said. "Concentrate your operations on that, especially in Iraq and the Gulf."

One commentator in the article had this to say:

Retired Gen. William Odom, a scholar at the Hudson Institute and an expert in the Soviet collapse, said bin Laden's analogy is off base since the Soviet Union collapsed for reasons other than Afghanistan, including the weakness of its state-run economy.

As far as spending on Iraq, Odom said damage to the U.S. economy is attributable to the Bush Administration embarking on a costly war. In the fall 2003, Congress approved $87.5 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and $25 billion more last spring, and Bush is expected to request another $75 billion to $100 billion early in 2005.

"If we're stupid enough to go off and do something like that, bin Laden can justly crow about it," Odom said. "But I don't think he can take credit for having caused it."

Odom believes no al-Qaeda strategy can topple U.S. dominance.

"In an operational sense, U.S.-made policies, not bin Laden's actions, have risked putting the United States in a very serious situation," he said.

Which brings the question: Why are we doing this to ourselves?

[TWiley]

1. The World Trade Center attack cost about $100K

To date, the republicans have spent roughly $200 Billion in response. Several years ago I argued on the CNN message board that we could not afford to spend a million dollars in response to every dollar spent by terrorists.

Conservatives seem to be deliberately creating a catastrophic financial crisis. Why would they do that?

To me, the reason is obvious. First of all, they want to impoverish the social welfare structure, and next they want to have the peasants fighting for every scrap of bread.

It is nearly impossible to sell racism when there is more than enough to go around, it is easy to sell it when times are hard. Everyone is looking for a leg up on their neighbor when food is scarce. The survival instinct kicks in and humans tend to get tribal. This environment even effects religion.

A couple thousand years ago, widespread prosperity came to one group of people, and the result was widespread belief in multiple Gods and Goddesses, sexual promiscuity, and general gluttony.

Across the river, the Jewish people were living in poverty fighting for survival. Their God was angry, and imposed strict moral codes governing sexuality. Reproduction was controlled to avoid birthing more mouths than could be fed. Out of wedlock births were a problem because nobody wanted to feed those children, and nobody wanted to watch them starve to death.

At the end of the day, the destruction of the middle class suits this new Republican brand of Christian Fundamentalism perfectly.

It establishes a very small ruling class, it creates a very large and powerless peasant class, poverty forces everyone into church (especially with "faith based initiatives") and an hierarchal system of privilege based on status and race is imposed.

Individuals welcome this system because it puts their needs above those below. Those at the bottom are slaves and too powerless to effect any change.

This impoverished middle class is then governed by a ruthless God through the legislation of morality. This process is administered by the religious officials it empowers, and this structure is governed by the ruling class. The result is a small super wealthy ruling class which is free from all social responsibility, and a peasant class who must please the church for sustenance and opportunity.

This old story is actually the new conservative republican vision for America.

[NMDemDist2]

2. they are trying to kill the New Deal--Wither on the Vine

do a google on the phrase "wither on the vine" and you'll get articles on all kinds of "social programs" the GOP want to let WotV

for instance

run up the deficit then reduce government support systems to the lowest common denominator in order to eliminate those pesky poor people. http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-12/08russell.cfm

[izzie]

3. I also think the Russians got sick of it all

All business was set up for the military.Science, colleges to feed this military and when they got to see the out side world it was really something to them. Even their smartest people were sent to the military. We could COULD do both but I think we have finally seen that now we have to give up to this military.Our science helped the military not the military helping science. Once you start wasting good things just to blow up things and people you are in trouble.Now the world sees a lot of our military is a sham as are a lot of people here in the US starting to see we can not do both. The problem is will we let it go on or what?

[Nay]

4. We aren't doing it to ourselves, really -- the neocons are doing it

to us. Under the no-longer-true impression that conservatives will be more fiscally responsible (and also for less intelligent reasons), voters put these asswipes back in charge. Their stated aim IS to bankrupt the country so that its population can be brought into line with the neocons' s vision of a theocratic nation run by an elite. Grover Norquist has stated that he wants to get the government down to a small size and "drown the rest of it in the bathtub." Of course, afterward, HIS type of government, the theocracy, will grow to enormous size, but that's OK.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. Which brings the question: Why are we doing this to ourselves?

To keep us from having too much say in world affairs. Someone else is calling the shots... shrub is just following orders.

Rule By Secrecy
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060931841.01._PIdp-schmooS,TopRight,7,-26_PE32_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0060931841/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-8618749-6564912#reader-page


In this astonishing book, celebrated reporter and New York Times -; bestselling author Jim Marrs painstakingly explores the world's most closely guarded secrets, exposing clandestine cabals and the power they have wielded throughout time. Defiantly rooting out the truth, he unearths starting evidence that the real movers and shakers covertly collude to start and stop wars, manipulate stock markets and interest rates, maintain class distinctions, and even censor the six o'clock news. And they do all this under the mindful auspices of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, the CIA, and even the Vatican.

Drawing on historical evidence and his own impeccable research, Mars carefully traces the mysteries that connect these modern-day conspiracies to humankind's prehistory. The eye-opening result is an extraordinary synthesis of historical information -; much of it long hidden from the public -; that sheds light on the people and organizations that rule our lives.

Disturbing, provocative, and utterly compelling, Rule by Secrecy offers a singular worldview that may explain who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.

[TWiley]

6. kick

[welshTerrier2]

7. multi-national corporate governance ...

there was a time, domestically, that the U.S. government acted as a "check and balance" on large, domestic corporations ... it was commonly understood that the purpose of business was to generate profits ... absent government oversight, there was nothing to constrain business from putting its own commercial interests ahead of the interests of the American people ...

but with the emergence of the right-wing, the line between business and government has grown thinner and thinner ... government has become the servant of big business ... not only has the government been infiltrated by special corporate interests, but these infil-"traitors" have done all they could to dismantle the government ...

the right-wing goal is not a smaller government; it's a weaker government ... by spending the government into oblivion and supporting unaffordable reductions in the tax burden, it becomes impossible to wage a credible argument for needed government programs ... the ultimate goal is not really the dismantling of the New Deal; it's the dismantling of government regulation and oversight ... weaker is the goal, not smaller ...

and in today's global economic model, the pattern is the same ... where as before, the objective was to weaken oversight of domestic corporations, now the objective is the weakening of the U.S. government so that it is no longer able to challenge the corporate governance of large, multi-nationals ... the U.S. government is told by these massive corporations where their commercial interests lie ... if they need cheap labor, treaties are entered into ... if they need oil, wars are waged ... if they need raw materials or more lenient environmental laws, environmental treaties are abandoned ... if they need to reduce the costs of product liability lawsuits, they weaken the rights of citizens and strengthen the hand of corporations ...

perhaps those who believe the willful bankrupting of the U.S. treasury is being done to dismantle the New Deal are partially correct ... perhaps those who believe the goal is to prop up an elite ruling class within the U.S. are correct ... but I think, at the very core of these insane economic policies, is the greedy hand of multi-national corporate governance ... that's the ultimate goal ... wealth and power exploited to yield global domination by multi-national corporations ...

[MisterP]

8. I recall that the missile gap was hawked by a MIC group called

the Committee on the Present Danger, who made it up in order to scare Americans into filling the pig trough over and over again.
They're back, by the way, with St. Joe Lieberman in its vanguard.

[trof]

9. Thanks for all the thought provoking comments.

My question was not as rhetorical as it might have appeared.
I never cease to learn here.

[MsConduct]

10. "We" aren't responsible for any of this..."we" are stuck on the

run away train to Hell that bush has put us on.