LETTER TO DEM: Iraq War & business first foreign policy

I got a nice campaign letter from Barbara Ann Radnofsky entitled "No More Iraqs," which was good as far as it went, but failed to get to the heart of the problem. My letter isn't meant as a criticism of her, but as a call for a real re-assessment of the core of our foreign policy that few Democrats seem willing to do (Byron Dorgan and a few others excepted).

Dear Ms. Radnofsky,

Thank you for the email on parallels to Vietnam, but in the case of Iraq, there is an even bigger issue than response to strategic threats, particularly since the Bush administration knowingly exaggerated the threat Iraq would pose to us even if they did have nukes. The issue is how much corporate and financial interests dictate our foreign policy, often to the detriment of the safety of the American people since it incites such resentment in the countries these policies target.

In the case of Iraq, the business interest was oil. Bush cancelled Iraq's oil contracts with Russia, France, and others and gave them to American corporations. Gen. Jay Garner the first guy we sent over to run Iraq said seizing the oil and the radical privatization of their economy would incite an insurgency. He was right, and immediately fired.

Saddam was a bad guy, but this business first approach also trumps democracy when democracy doesn't produce the results business likes. Bush vetoed the Iraqi parliament's first choice for prime minister, and backed a recall and even coup against Hugo Chavez, who has been elected and re-elected by wide majorities with international election monitors watching (in stark contrast to our own presidential elections). Chavez' primary sin seems to be driving a hard bargain with the oil companies and having the audacity to ask for the same royalties on his oil that the US gets on our oil--about 13-16%, and is actually using some of the money to improve the lives of his citizens. Far from suppressing freedom, I heard him take a question from a reporter whose paper's owner backed the coup against him. In the US, a reporter like Helen Thomas who merely says something critical about the president is ignored for years and in the case of Dan Rather, literally run out of his job.

Chavez is likewise popular in the rest of South America because our pro-corporate, pro-banking foreign policy, neoliberalism, has had such brutal effects there.

I like capitalism. I think I have better tennis shoes and computers because of it. But our foreign policy is not merely promoting capitalism, but giving a structural advantage to a few at the expense of the rest of the world and the average American.

If we stopped invading countries that elected leaders who stand up for their people, and stopped writing trade agreements that make the poor poorer, and create a race to the bottom for the lowest wages which is sucking American jobs out of the country, wages here would stabilize because they would be doing the same elsewhere. If we allowed people to choose their own government (without our troops guns in their faces or expectation of a military coup if they make the "wrong" choice) and run their own economies, they will be less likely to become terrorists who want to fly planes into our buildings.

The past few years it has become painfully clear that even our own democracy takes a back seat when oil companies see a prize like Iraq's trillions of dollars worth of oil. If the true goal of ensuring the profits from that oil went to American corporations were presented honestly to the American people, stripped of any talk of WMD, terrorist boogey men, spreading democracy, or even the less embarrassing lie that we need to invade to get access to the oil (which can be done far more cheaply through negotiating contracts as China and other countries are doing) few Americans would support the war apart from major shareholders in oil companies.

If the Democrats take over Congress, it would be nice if they changed things so the worst criticisms of our foreign policy are no longer true.

Links to sources on Iraq's oil & neoliberalism:
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2006/09/iraq-oil-war-resources.html








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Bush running Sopranos scam with our tax dollars

Since Congress raised the debt ceiling to $9 TRillion, it's time to recap the "bust out" scam the Republicans are running with the help of many Democrats.

I have passed this on to friends who don't follow politics very closely, and they instantly understood the application to our politics.

Essentially, the mob gets a foothold in a business, runs up huge debts, sells everything, pockets the cash, then leaves the original business owner with the hollowed out shell of the business.

This has been our bipartisan foreign policy, called neoliberalism, for the last several decades. One of the guys who would set up the deals wrote a book about it called CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN.

What he would do is go to the leaders of Third World countries and make them this offer: If they took out gigantic loans their country could never repay, and use the money to buy construction projects from certain American companies like Halliburton and Bechtel, the leader himself would become fabulously wealthy. If he refused, we would support his political opponents. If that failed, we would support a coup. If that failed, we would kill him. If that failed, we would invade his country. Saddam was one of the few to require the full treatment in modern history. Once the deal was set up, and it was clear the country couldn't repay the loans, then we demand that they give up control of some natural resource, privatize and sell off essential services like electricity, phones, and even water for bargain basement prices, and of course enter these free trade agreements which make it difficult to impossible for countries to set their own labor and environmental standards.

This system has worked so well overseas, that the Republicans seem to be doing it to the United States right now. The debts Bush is running up aren't the result of poor planning, but of design. He is running a bust out, using our country to give tax cuts, defense, and rebuilding contracts to the very wealthy and charging it to our collective credit card. Iraq is clearly part of this. Even if the war went well, the benefits would flow to the few, not to the average American who is paying for whole thing.

We have already seen the results of the second half of the scam here in California with the privatization of our electricity: rolling blackouts to extort more money from the state and individual ratepayers. Things have gone even worse in places that have privatized water.

But as Tony Soprano says at the end of this piece, this is who they are, this is what they do.

KEY EXCERPTS:

United Scatinos of America
by Steven Hart

One of the things that redeemed the second season of "The Sopranos," which had gone all wobbly after a good start, was the unblinkingly cruel subplot about David Scatino, a boyhood friend of mobster Tony Soprano, who talks his way into one of Tony’s high-stakes poker games and almost instantly buries himself under an unpayable mountain of debts. It quickly turns out that Tony knew about Scatino’s compulsive gambling problem, but let him into the game anyway because Scatino and his wife own a successful sporting-goods store.

What follows is more frightening than any monster movie. After siphoning out Scatino’s bank account (including his son’s college fund), Tony and his cronies gorge themselves on the store’s credit lines, buying up easily resold big-ticket merchandise and leaving the store awash in hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills. The business dissolves into bankruptcy, taking with it Scatino’s marriage (his wife divorces him), his family (his son, cheated out of an Ivy League future, hates him) and a good portion of his sanity. In the end, as he prepares to embark on his new life as a drifter and day-laborer, Scatino asks Tony why he let him destroy himself. After all, haven’t they known each other since childhood? Tony replies with the story of the frog and the scorpion. "This is what I am," Tony says. "This is what I do."

What we’ve just seen is a variation on an old con called a bust-out. Usually it involves con men offering to buy a business, making a partial payment to gain access to the firm’s credit and name, and then hollowing out the company’s finances by running up the existing credit lines and opening new ones, all of which are maxed out to buy electronic gear and anything else that can be resold quickly at a fraction of its value. For the con men involved in the bust-out, it’s all gravy. The phony buyer –- usually a shell company with no discernible assets -– defaults and the business reverts to its original owner, by which time the once-thriving firm has been turned into a rotting hulk ready to have its bones picked clean by creditors.

The Bush family has often been referred to as the WASP version of the Corleones, but the Soprano clan makes for a much better comparison. At its best, "The Sopranos" is an acid mockery of the phony gravitas of the three "Godfather" movies. Where Michael Corleone is heroically evil, an international player who consorts with statesmen and the Vatican before succumbing to his tragic flaw, Tony Soprano is a sewer rat engaged in the grubby business of preying on human weakness and fear -– when his fall comes, it will be tragic only to himself. Until then, however, he’s going to make as much money as he can for himself and his buddies, and leave the rest of the world holding the bill.

I'm not just using hyperbole here. I do think that when honest historians assess the Bush administration, they will find it more useful to treat George II and his Republican cronies as a criminal organization rather than a political party. The best tool for analyzing Bush's policies is not historiography, but the procedures used by federal agents as they pursue a RICO investigation into a mobbed-up business.

***

This is what they are. This is what they do. Didn't they tell you?

***

Insane tax cuts for the wealthy. Delusion military ventures abroad. From the minute the Bushies took power, their biggest concern has been to break open the cash registers, empty the shelves and open the bank vaults. Stewardship is a joke to them. What we are witnessing may very well be the biggest bust-out in human history.

And if you, good citizen, are wondering where you fit into this picture, just cast your mind back to the last episode of the second season of "The Sopranos." One of the closing shots shows us David Scatino in an empty parking lot, tying some gear to the top of his car as he prepares to leave his ruined life behind him. He wanted to play poker with the big boys, so you can say he brought his troubles on himself. A majority of Americans voted for Bush in at least one of the last two elections, so you can say we brought this on ourselves. In Scatino's case, human weakness created a business opportunity for Tony Soprano. America's weakness created a business opportunity for the Republicans. With the national press at a historic low ebb, the Democratic Party flat on its back and the airwaves humming with wingnut propaganda, the pickings couldn't be any richer.

They saw their chance and they took it. That's what they are. That's what they do.

(Posted by Steven Hart, 8/2/05)

FULL TEXT:

http://www.theopinionmill.com/Scatino.html



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PAT BUCHANAN nuclear math: 10,000 US + 200 Israeli nukes= no Iran threat

In 1992, I listened to Pat Buchanan's speech to the GOP convention as I drove from LA to Portland, and he scared the shit out of me. He came close to calling for an open civil war between conservatives and the rest of us. Fortunately, Papa Bush was embarassed by the excess and lost anyway.

Buchanan has not changed, but the Republicans have moved so far right that he has more in common with the left, largely because he refuses to ignore what he knows about history and math for the sake of agreeing the party.

The basic math on Iran is roughly the same as it was on Iraq:

• We have 10,000 nuclear warheads


• Israel has 200


• Iran has none (maybe a handful in a few years to a decade)


• If Iran uses one on us or Israel, either of us could nuke Iran out of existence and still have plenty to spare.

Back in the Cold War, neither we nor the Soviets launched our nukes because of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). It seems hard to believe a smaller country would commit suicide, knowing that at best they injured us, but couldn't take us with them. This should be called a corollary of MAD: OSH-OSAD (One Side Hurt-One Side Assured Destruction).

We have the most powerful military on earth, but are continually being persuaded that some flea on our ass is going to eat us alive. imagine you had a neighbor who collected machine guns and occasionally shot the other neighbors dogs. Would you ever steal his newspaper off the driveway? Or sleep with his wife? Or pick a fight with him?

If you prefer we skip this war, sign this petition that Howard Zinn, Harold Pinter, and George Galloway have already put their names on:

http://stopwaroniran.org/statement.shtml

KEY EXCERPTS:

Churchill, Hitler, and Newt

By Patrick J. Buchanan

02/20/06 "WND"

But are the comparisons of Ahmadinejad with Hitler and Iran with the Third Reich, let alone Newt with Churchill, instructive? Or are they ludicrous? Again, a few facts.

In 1942, Hitler's armies dominated Europe from the Pyrenees to the Urals. Ahmadinejad is the president of a nation whose air and naval forces would be toasted in hours by the United States. Iran has missiles that can hit Israel, but no nuclear warheads. Israel could put scores of atom bombs on Iran. The United States, without losing a plane, could make the country uninhabitable with one B-2 flyover and a few MX and Trident missiles.

Why would Ayatollah Khameinei, who has far more power than Ahmadinejad, permit him to ignite a war that could mean the end of their revolution and country? And if we were not intimidated by a USSR with thousands of nuclear warheads targeted on us, why should Ahmadinejad cause Newt to break out in cold sweats at night?

Currently, the "nuclear program" of Iran consists of trying to run uranium hexafluoride gas through a few centrifuges. There is no hard evidence Iran is within three years of producing enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb.

FULL TEXT:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11991.htm


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