The Libya Dilemma of Obama

“if we try to overthrow Qaddafi by force, our coalition would splinter. We would likely have to put U.S. troops on the ground, or risk killing many civilians from the air. The dangers to our men and women in uniform would be far greater. So would the costs and our share of the responsibility for what comes next.”

Here was the dilemma faced by Obama. He clearly wants regime change but is mindful of the regime change disaster in Iraq. He went to UN for permission but ended up giving responsibility to NATO. His speech lauded by the US media was one of the most confused speeches made by him.
This is not surprising considering what is happening in the Middle East. He never wanted regime change in Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia but he does want regime change in Libya, Syria, Iran. In trying to explain why he has different standards he wants to put a humanitarian face to his actions.
Trying to explain to the US public that the USA has a God given right to interfere in world
affairs while still stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan and wanting to invade Iran has to be a class juggling act which even Obama is not capable. of. The US public is not even aware how the CIA was kicked out of Pakistan after the Raymond Davis fiasco.
When Germany ( together with China and Russia) abstained from the UN resolution on Libya, the world took one more step in looking the other way in accepting US leadership in International affairs.
Much as I would love to see Ghaddafi kicked out as well as the Bahraini Shaikh and all other leaders in any country who have ruled for more than 10 years, Obama seems to have a very difficult time making that a golden rule for governance. For a country that preaches dissent and debate, the US seems to have no tolerance for Governments which may have a different point of view even if they want to come to power through a Democratic process.
Khusro

Ten years of decline

"Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen, one of the first things he did after 9/11 was make arrangements to come to Washington, and he met with President Bush, with the CIA Director George Tenet, with Dick Cheney, with the head of the FBI. And he basically said to the Bush administration, “We’re going to give you full access to Yemen’s territories to conduct counterterrorist operations.” And, you know, they essentially hatched a plot where Yemen would extract funding for its own military out of the Bush administration in return for the Bush administration being able to conduct counterterrorist operations inside of Yemen, including the killing of Yemeni citizens." Jeremy Scahill


The rationale for the US support of Israel has been to create a terrorisit organisation in the Middle East in order to keep the Arab countries
and subsequently the oil in check. The other startegy has been to create local monsters like Mubarak, Ali Saleh, The Shah of Iran etc who can remain in power for 50 years and repress their people for personal gain and untold power. That era is now visibly coming to an end, with the US clinging to prolong it a little bit longer. There is very little difference in this policy between Bush and Obama. Bush hastened the demise of this era through sheer arrogance and ham handedness. The US media has done an incredible job of insulating it's readers from recognising the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as the absolute rape and desecration of two sovereign nations.

The Al Qaeda bogey has been hugely succesful in pouring billions into the coffers of dictators who were willing partners in crime but has proved to be a huge Foreign Policy debacle by creating an invisible enemy of no fixed address who cannot be defeated. This has created an image of a very vulnerable US who can now be defied. Wikileaks has resoundingly exposed US double speak and US Foreign policy now appears to be in tatters. The BRIC countries watch with glee, the Arabs with concern and the French with open disdain. Nato is no longer beholden to the US forcing them to go to the UN which under Ban Ki Moon has become an obsolete organisation.

The shift in power which came about in the first 10 years of 2010, is continuing. By 2020, a New World will have formly taken root.

Khusro

Who needs a Super Power?

"Certainly, no one in their right mind, Israeli or American, can believe that a continued resort to force will remedy whatever it is that fuels anti-Israeli or anti-American antagonism throughout much of the Islamic world. To expect persistence to produce something different or better is moonshine." Andrew Bacevich



The above statement is not true for almost a third of America and a fairly significant right wing elements in Israel. To the extent that they have sway over their Military machines, the killings will continue and even moderate elements like Obama will want to appease them. It cannot be taken for granted that Iran will not be attacked. The Americans have not seen the horrors of war visited on them as the Europeans have. History is witness to the fact that two very strange bedfellows have influence over America's Iran policy, Saudi Arabia and Israel and they both want the same thing.

Bacevich also does not discuss that Iraq and Afghanistan are not over. The cost of exiting either country will be more expensive to the US then they can estimate. The lessons from Vietnam were never learnt but the new lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan are not even being recognised. The lesson is not that overwhelming superiority in arms or excessive use of them against the enemy will not get you what you want. The lesson is that the world does not need a super power. If the US vacated that seat, there will be no takers. China has no interest in it, but the US is not about to vacate that seat because it has somehow become glued to it.

Technology has brought a new dimension now to the waging of wars, it has to be done in the glaring light of the unofficial media. Just as you cannot now torture your enemy without every one knowing about it , you cannot go into the wilds of Afghanistan and kill women and children without every one knowing about it. America must wait for a truthful leader, unlike Bill " I did not have sex with that woman", Clinton or George ' we do not torture " Bush. America may be looking for their own Chengiz Khan who will kill, burn, rape and pillage without feeling embarrassed about it. There is an equal chance of this happening as of America going into a corner and sulking.

Khusro

Attacking Iran

"What distinguishes neocons from normal people is their relentless dedication to what they perceive (incorrectly) as Israel's best interests, their contempt for Muslims, and their reckless desire to involve America in wars that have little, or nothing, to do with US interests. "

But they are still around and still pushing for a war, which they want even more than the last one. Everywhere you look there's Elliot Abrams, Richard Perle, John Bolton, John Podhoretz, Douglas Feith, Danielle Pletka, The Washington Post editorial page, Frank Gaffney, Charles Krauthammer, Max Boot, The Wall Street Journal, Daniel Pipes, New Republic, Liz Cheney and a host of others who, undaunted by the Iraq debacle, are gung-ho about taking out Iran. (Then there is AIPAC, which is the war party's headquarters.)



This very powerful and inflential group of right winger journalists are listened to by a wider audience than Fox news and right wing talk shows who mostly talk to their own audience.
They help to demonize others and spread projudice and hatred towards people whose ideology they are opposed to. They took over the White house when Bush was President and influened it into two wars which were foolish, irresponsible and based on lies and misinformation.
While America has not recovered from these disasters, they are advocating an even bigger disaster.
Their beliefs are as extreme as those of the Taliban with the big exception that they have the ability to influence the killing of more innocent people then the Taliban could in a million years.
A lot of people dont see the parallel because these people bask in the glory of being American. They carry the support of at least one third of all Americans and more significantly have cleverly formed an alliance with big business which likes wars.
People who belong to the fringe have become mainstream and America would be in for a rough ride but for the fact that it can no longer sustain military adventures.
Khusro

Is the leadeship of the US now seriously flawed

"There was no emergency. No one had attacked anyone. There wasn't any new WMD. We could have taken the time and got it right. The forces weren't ready to go in. They have said that themselves." Claire Short.

An inquiry in the UK into the lead up to the Iraq war, is showing what many of us have known from day one. The Iraq war was never about either WMDs or terrorism. This is leading people to believe that it was about regime change, even if that was not sustainable as a reason to put before the UN. The truth is that it was not even about regime change. Even Obama has distanced himself from the Iraq adventure by calling it the wrong war.
The fact that both the President of the US and the Prime Minister of the UK lied about the real reasons not only to their public but also to their colleagues and twisted the arms of their legal advisers to support these trumped up reasons lays bare how these institutions operate.
It calls into question the stated reasons for the attack on Afghanistan and it's continued occupation, it calls into question the entire concept of the "war on terror" and it smears the mainstream media of these counties with toeing the Government line rather than questioning it. Bush and Blair deserve to be convicted as war criminals and that may never happen but the Institution of the President of the US has suffered untold damage. The call to others to follow the political system of the US rings hollow and in fact encourages people looking for a model to look elsewhere.
In Europe, France and Germany stand out for having opposed the reasons and timing of the Iraq war and Britain stands exposed for being " a poodle". The type of inquiry being held in the UK cannot be held in the US. The US has a greater intolerance for the sexual escapades of their leaders and lawmakers then it does for their political ethics. This is a problem not just for the US but for the whole world as the US has the ability to impact the rest of the world for better or for worse. The question is being asked ( not in Davos) whether the Leadership of the US is doing more harm to the world then it is doing good. As long as there is no alternative the world may choose to live with a seriously flawed leader but clearly there is now a vacuum waiting to be filled.
Khusro

The failure of wars started by America has not made them any wiser

"The impetus for weaning Americans away from their infatuation with war, if it comes at all, will come from within the officer corps. It certainly won’t come from within the political establishment, the Republican Party gripped by militaristic fantasies and Democrats too fearful of being tagged as weak on national security to exercise independent judgment. Were there any lingering doubt on that score, Barack Obama, the self-described agent of change, removed it once and for all: by upping the ante in Afghanistan he has put his personal imprimatur on the Long War. " Basevich

Comment

Basevich has been kind in this article to American leaders. Not only have the wars launched by America been failures they have ended up having the opposite effect. The war in Iraq as an example removes from the scene, Iran's greatest enemy Saddam Hussain. The Shias were brought back to power and after exiting Iraq, the US will effectively hand over Iraq to a grateful Iran.

Similarly in Afghanistan, the US can hold themselves singularly responsible for making heroes out of the Taliban. The Taliban have singularly resisted not just the US but also NATO. An eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan will leave the country to a resurgent Taliban who will no longer be beholden to Pakistan. It will also leave them friendless in Pakistan, their most critical ally in the region. In spite of giving generous aid to Pakistan, the US is highly unpopular with the general populace there.

Khusro

How we can keep terrorism alive

Terrorism has now become a tool in the hands of political strategists for both political parties in the US. The public has been driven into a funk about "attacks on the homeland" and how the only way to avoid them is to stop the "friends" of the would be attacker, ten thousand miles away. Both parties claim that the evidence of a lack of attack in the US is the main evidence of how effectively the administration is dealing with the Security of Americans.

Decisions about Pakistan and Afghanistan are being made in Washington with one eye on how it would help the chances of the party in power to stay in power. If these decisions don't make sense to people in Pakistan or Afghanistan it is because they think that America truly sees the Taliban or Al Qaida as a threat to their interests. If these decisions are eventually going to back fire then the people in power do not care because they will not be around to take the heat. Bush is sitting happily in Texas after wreaking a heavy toll on Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan but he got to strut around on the world scene for 8 years.

What if it cost the US trillions of dollars with nothing to show for it, that is Obama's problem.

The Europeans on the other hand are besides themselves with consternation and would have pulled out many many years ago but for American arm twisting. NATO wants no part of this neither are they needed but for the American desire to depict this as global rather than an American problem.

Obama could have and should have blamed Bush for destroying America's credibility and prestige and bringing about the collapse of the Economy partly through waging unwindable wars with bottom less appetites for troops and money. Why has he not done this and instead continued with Bush's disastrous Foreign policies? Simply because his political advisers are telling him that the American public has been frightened gutless into believing that they are not secure and want only those people to be leading them who make them feel secure. Traditionally this has been the Republican party despite Truman, Roosevelt and Kennedy. In this era the Democrats wrongly believe that as the Party of peace they need to appear war like to the public. Hence Obama's senseless decision to pour more troops into Afghanistan.

The more Obama's popularity plummets by the day the more hawkish he will become and we can expect drone attacks to escalate and perhaps Yemen added to the list of casualties. Fortunately the US has run out of money and cannot afford to attack Yemen leave alone Iran. This limits them to staging fake attempts to blow up airlines in the US. I am not saying the current administration is up to it but what about the opposition? I can be wrong but nothing makes sense when major decisions are being taken affecting the lives of millions of poor and innocent people around the world on the basis of how these decisions will play out on CNN and NBC.

Khusro

Does Israel control the US or is just an agent of the US

I believe that Israel through AIPAC controls our political machinery. There is no other explanation for Obama not being able to do what he believes in. No politician can hope to get elected if he so much as believes in having an even handed policy towards the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. From time to time you will hear me say that our political system is broken and that is what I mean. It is too beholden to the various lobbies.

It is true that the Israelis have been smart enough in becoming the tools for our imperialist agenda but the policies towards Iran in particular and Islam in general are Israel originated and are harmful to the US. Israel's survival on the other hand depends on such policies.

This is a good subject for debate and discussion, but I believe that our destiny is no longer in our hands and has not been for some time. Whether you and I can do anything about it remains to be seen.

Khusro

Al-Qaeda spreads its tentacles

Excerpt

"Unlike in Iraq, where al-Qaeda chose to participate directly in battles with its own front line fighters and under its own brand name, bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in South Asia is increasingly content to play a role behind the scenes, influencing key players in the struggle and furthering its political interests, said Western terrorism analysts and Afghans."

Edtorial Comment

FATA has become world Head Quarters for Osama. The Mehshud Taliban are different from the Mullah Omar Taliban. There are also the ISI Taliban. Swat for a time became a rallying point for all Taliban. The Pak army was content to let Swat happen so that they could alarm the Americans enough to get serious money commitments from them. This strategy almost backfired. The Taliban could have won the war but for their own stupidities and high handedness. Incidents like flogging women in public turned the tide against them and made possible the timing of the Army intervention.



The Taliban has developed a superior fighting force but lack a coherent political or religious ideology. This is an area where Al Qaeda can help them but Al Qaeda's role still remains that of trainer, financier. It is not clear if Al Zawahiri has the intellectual capability to develop Economic Justice philosophies. Like most other people they have misread Syed Qutub.



The Swat experience should be an eye opener for the Taliban. Where they achieved military victory, they lost out on the Islamic concepts of Justice. In the final analysis they behaved more like bandits than Islamic warriors. In fact they proved to the world that they have very little understanding of Islamic thinking. So far their desire to rid their land of foreign occupation and influence remains a basic tenet but what they will do after the foreigner leaves or is made to leave is a lot of woolly mumbo jumbo. This is where they read Qutub correctly. Unless you get rid of the foreigner, you will be unable to evolve your own way of life, according to Qutub.

Here lies the problem the battle between the American way of life, which for all intents is obsolete and an Islamic way of life, which remains largely undefined in the context of a modern state there is a lot of confusion and empty rhetoric. The evolution of Islamic thinking then becomes the primary challenge for all Muslim Intellectuals.



That the Mulla has a very basic and rudimentary knowledge of Islam is more than crystal clear but the basic instinct of the mullah that a primitive life of simplicity with freedom is preferable to a life of subservience and slavery is the right one.



The only thing that stands between Pakistan being beaten into a pulp like the Afghan is Pakistan's nuclear capability. The current American strategy is to take out that capability. That is the other problem in the current scenario, Pakistan is not clear whether in America it is dealing with friend or foe.



Khusro

Al-Qaeda spreads its tentacles
By Philip Smucker

KHOST, Afghanistan - Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network is seizing a greater role behind the scenes in Afghanistan and Pakistan in an effort that could block the Barack Obama administration's stated goal of denying the terror network sanctuary in South Asia.

A three-month investigation of al-Qaeda's activities, from Nuristan in the north to Paktika in the southeast, suggests that bin Laden's terror network - working through Afghan and Pakistani partners - is present in almost every Afghan and Pakistani province along the fluid border areas between the two countries.

Interviews with US military commanders and American radio intercepts of Arab and Chechen fighters as well as confirmed





captures or kills of foreign fighters inside Afghanistan bolster the findings.

More alarming to Western terrorism analysts and US commanders, however, is the recognition that al-Qaeda has succeeded in goading its regional partners into accepting the idea of a "two-front-war" against US-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Afghanistan and the government in Pakistan. That war in turn guarantees bin Laden's network permanent safe havens along the porous border between the two nations, from which it can plan larger international terrorist attacks.

Unlike in Iraq, where al-Qaeda chose to participate directly in battles with its own frontline fighters and under its own brand name, bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in South Asia is increasingly content to play a role behind the scenes, influencing key players in the struggle and furthering its political interests, said Western terrorism analysts and Afghans.

American terrorism experts say that al-Qaeda's leadership has chosen the senior leader of Pakistan's Taliban, Baitullah Mahsud, as their point man. Uzbek and Chechen "trigger men", most of whom have been living opposite across the border in the North and South Waziristan tribal areas in Pakistan, have helped Mahsud, 34, consolidate his own authority up and down the border in the past year. In March, the US government offered a US$5 million reward for Mahsud, whom it says is a "key al-Qaeda facilitator", or ally, responsible for multiple suicide attacks.

Pakistani officials in Afghanistan and Pakistan said this week that Mahsud was using al-Qaeda's highly trained gunmen in the Pakistani Taliban's ongoing guerrilla struggle in the Swat Valley. Mahsud bullied his way into a position of leadership across most of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas earlier this year when a new coalition of insurgent groups confirmed him as their "supreme commander" in February.

American counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan are focused on building a bulwark against al-Qaeda, which the Barack Obama administration deems an essential part of the puzzle for peace in South Asia. But Mahsud and several of his deputies, who operate on both sides of the border, have created a strong bridge linking the Pakistani Taliban with the Afghan Taliban in a two-front war with a border that has proven impossible for US and Pakistani forces to control.

"Al-Qaeda is operating parasitically on the successes of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban by providing them with critical services, including global media networks, resource mobilization and precious human capital," said Vahid Brown, an al-Qaeda analyst with West Point's prestigious Combating Terrorism Center (CTC).

An Afghan, working with Western forces in Afghanistan and who asked to remain anonymous, said he had monitored al-Qaeda radio traffic in a Paktika province district that is a stronghold of the Haqqani network, run by Sirajuddin Haqqani. "I set up a radio scanner two months ago and I picked up Chechens and Arabs talking regularly," he said. "At one point, we heard an Arab talking to a Chechen say, 'Hey, the money has come in, you can attack soon'." The Afghan said that an Afghan al-Qaeda figure, Maulvi Twaha, who he said he had personally seen shoot dead five Afghan students in 2001, was operating openly in the province, assisting foreign agents and fighters to enter and leave the region.
An American, embedded as a trainer with the Afghan National Army, confirmed similar radio traffic. "It sounds from radio chatter like they have more recruits coming in, including Arabs, Uzbeks, Turkmen and Chechen fighters," said US Army Major Cory Schultz, 37, from the San Francisco Bay Area.

A leading al-Qaeda propagandist and ideologue, Abu Yahya al-Libbi, an escapee from the US prison at Bagram in July 2005, claimed in a propaganda booklet released in mid-March that Pakistan's army should be treated as an occupying infidel army waging an offensive war on an invaded Muslim population. He told Pakistanis that it was incumbent on them, as "good Muslims", to fight their own government.

Al-Libbi has helped the Pakistani Taliban set up successful propaganda operations of their own with FM broadcast stations that operate through portable Chinese transmission boxes. "Abu Yahya al-Libbi translates the network's ideas to a popular audience" on both sides of the border, said Brian Fishman, also at West Point's CTC.

Al-Libbi maintains close ties to the "Tora Bora Front" in eastern Afghanistan, north of the White Mountains, and has been interviewed on the website of the front, which is the domain of Mujahid Khalis, the son of deceased mujahideen leader Younus Khalis, who welcomed bin Laden to Afghanistan from Sudan in 1996.

Al-Qaeda's proxy Mahsud has aligned his fighters closely with those of Mullah "Radio" Fazlullah, whose insurgents are fighting a protracted war with Pakistani forces well to the north of Waziristan and centered in the region of Swat in Pakistan.

In a 2007 interview with this correspondent, Fazlullah did not mince words in support of al-Qaeda's goals in neighboring Afghanistan and around the globe: "When Muslims are under attack in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have a duty to fight back against the American crusaders and their allies," he said.

Other leading insurgent groups led by Jalaluddin Haqqani's son, Sirajuddin, as well as Mullah Nazir, who operate along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border out of Waziristan, have been forced to agree to the new al-Qaeda-backed strategy for the two-front war, said Western terrorism analysts.

Though bin Laden remains the head of al-Qaeda, operational control and support for wars in South Asia is largely believed to be the work of his right-hand man, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, who lives in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Other leading American terrorism experts said al-Qaeda had made significant adaptations meant to enhance its own power base, albeit usually well hidden behind the scenes. "Al-Qaeda is acting as a force multiplier by providing funding, assistance in propaganda efforts using its print and video outlets, strategic planning ability and aid on tactics," said Seth Jones, an advisor to the US military and the author of the forthcoming book, Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires.

Terrorism analysts believe that bin Laden has likely taken refuge in North or South Waziristan, or a large city well inside Pakistan's settled areas. They say his larger-than-life presence remains a thorn in the side of US efforts. "He is the head of the snake and he does matter," said Fishman, adding that bin Laden still likely takes part in the network's major decision-making.

West Point's terrorism analysts believe that al-Qaeda stands to gain from continued fighting and chaos on both sides of the border. "There has already been a significant movement of Pakistani Taliban leaders in the al-Qaeda camp into the settled areas of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province and their front for operations planning is spreading," said Brown. "Hundreds of thousands of additional internally displaced persons in Pakistan means lots of fresh blood for al-Qaeda's ranks."

Both US military and Afghan security officials confirmed a steady movement - by air from Dubai and other aerial hubs, by land across Iran and water from the Gulf - of international jihadis from the Middle East to South Asia. Many Arabs, Chechens and other foreign fighters recently completed tours of fighting in Iraq, where al-Qaeda suffered significant setbacks.

American military commanders say they are doing what they can to flush out known Taliban and al-Qaeda safe havens inside Afghanistan, but terrorism experts believe insurgents are planning fresh attacks in conjunction with an influx of 20,000 US and NATO forces this summer.

Colonel John Spiszer, 46, of Harker Heights, Texas, who commands US forces north of the White Mountains in eastern Afghanistan, acknowledged that one, Abu Ikhlas al Masri, an Egyptian al-Qaeda member, was contributing to the intense fight against his forces in the province of Kunar, not far from the Pakistani regions of Swat and Bajaur.

"The guys [al-Qaeda and other financiers] giving the insurgents money right now are doing it to survive and get fighters," he said. He added that his goal in pressing the fight along the border with Pakistan was to keep "facilitators and financiers" locked down in a battle near the border and keep them from further impacting the fight inside Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, the ties between al-Qaeda and leading insurgent groups go back to the days of bin Laden's own involvement in the fight against the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, he fought in eastern Afghanistan himself near Khost in the remote town of Jaji in Paktia province. Many of al-Qaeda's Arab operatives later took up residence inside Afghanistan as the Taliban rose to power in the late 1990s. Most of this crowd fled to Pakistan in the wake of the US invasion in 2001.

Leading Arabs and Uzbeks, in addition to plotting international terrorist actions, became successful in the cross-border trade of opium and heroin. Efforts of Pakistani and Afghan warlords to wrest more control of Pakistan's share of the regional drug trade from these same groups have failed, said Western analysts and Afghans.

Across from Khost in Pakistan, over mountains traversable by bicycle, al-Qaeda's own military trainers still work closely with strategic Taliban commanders at Haqqani command centers like the Manba Ulum Haqqania madrassa (seminary) in Northern Waziristan.

American unmanned Predator drones have repeatedly dropped bombs on or near the religious school, which is believed to maintain a number of secret bases across Waziristan. As a precaution against the US's aerial raids, al-Qaeda members in Waziristan rarely have tea in groups of more than three, said Afghans who travel to the region.

In addition, Taliban fighters, often working with al-Qaeda military trainers, have started to train indoors as well as in small mud-walled compounds, where they attract only limited attention from US aerial overflights and drone bombing runs.

Most Afghanistan-Pakistan insurgent groups, led by Mahsud and Mullah Omar's Afghan Taliban, have not officially adopted the "al-Qaeda" brand name, but they have essentially sworn their allegiance to bin Laden, say leading experts on the terror network.
They claim that al-Qaeda has learned from the mistake of going into business under its own name in Iraq and it prefers, instead, to remain behind the scenes, protected by local gunmen on the one hand, but capable of influencing the fight against US and foreign "infidels" in South Asia on the other hand.

Philip Smucker is a commentator and journalist based in South Asia and the Middle East. He is the author of Al-Qaeda's Great Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror's Trail (2004). He is currently writing My Brother, My Enemy, a book about America and the battle of ideas in the Islamic world.

(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Never mind N. Korea, who will stand up to America and Israel?

EDITORIAL COMMENT

Paul Craig Roberts lists the recent atrocities of the US which are destabilising the world and creating very serious Humanitarian issues. Nations are being destroyed, people made homeless and trillions of dollars of American tax payer money blown up in smoke while Americans themselves are getting unemployed in large numbers and American Industry is bankrupted.
Yet apart from a minority of journalists like Paul, the American media and hence the American public thinks that North Korea is a problem. North Korea may be a problem for it's own people but nowhere has it stated any designs on others in the way that the US does.
Incredible amounts of money is being spent by the US in supporting autocratic rulers to suppress their people from ever challenging the terrible role of the US in their countries. Saudi Arabia , Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia are just a few of these countries.
Unknown to us a New World is emerging from the rubble created by a super power gone mad. This world will not be friendly to the US but stand in the ranks of Iran, Venezuela, China, Russia, North Korea, India, Pakistan,Afghanistan, Iraq, Brazil, Cuba, Palestine and every other nation which throws off the yoke of American Imperialism so as to gain freedom to search their own destiny.
Twenty to thirty million homeless people will be in the forefront of this march against US power and the march will truly start when these people get rid of the American agents in their own countries. If we think there is a lot of instability in the world, we have seen nothing yet. The blow back from American policies has not even started yet. The orphans of the world have yet to realise as to who is responsible for killing their parents.

Khusro

Never mind N. Korea, who will stand up to America and Israel?

By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Contributing Writer


May 28, 2009, 00:10


“Obama Calls on World to ‘Stand Up To’ North Korea” read the headline. The United States, Obama said, was determined to protect “the peace and security of the world.”

Shades of doublespeak, doublethink, 1984.

North Korea is a small place. China alone could snuff it out in a few minutes. Yet, the president of the US thinks that nothing less than the entire world is a match for North Korea.

We are witnessing the Washington gangsters construct yet another threat like Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, John Walker Lindh, Hamdi, Padilla, Sami Al-Arian, Hamas, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the hapless detainees demonized by former US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld as “the 700 most dangerous terrorists on the face of the earth,” who were tortured for six years at Gitmo only to be quietly released. Just another mistake, sorry.

The military/security complex that rules America, together with the Israel Lobby and the financial banksters, needs a long list of dangerous enemies to keep the taxpayers’ money flowing into its coffers.

The Homeland Security lobby is dependent on endless threats to convince Americans that they must forego civil liberty in order to be safe and secure.

The real question is who is going to stand up to the American and Israeli governments?

Who is going to protect Americans’ and Israelis’ civil liberties, especially those of Israeli dissenters and Israel’s Arab citizens?

Who is going to protect Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Lebanese, Iranians, and Syrians from Americans and Israelis?

Not Obama, and not the right-wing brownshirts that today rule Israel.

Obama’s notion that it takes the entire world to stand up to N. Korea is mind-boggling, but this mind-boggling idea pales in comparison to Obama’s guarantee that America will protect “the peace and security of the world.”

Is this the same America that bombed Serbia, including Chinese diplomatic offices and civilian passenger trains, and pried Kosovo loose from Serbia and gave it to a gang of Muslin drug lords, lending them NATO troops to protect their operation?

Is this the same America that is responsible for approximately one million dead Iraqis, leaving orphans and widows everywhere and making refugees out of one-fifth of the Iraqi population?

Is this the same America that blocked the rest of the world from condemning Israel for its murderous attack on Lebanese civilians in 2006 and on Gazans most recently, the same America that has covered up for Israel’s theft of Palestine over the past 60 years, a theft that has produced 4 million Palestinian refugees driven by Israeli violence and terror from their homes and villages?

Is this the same America that is conducting military exercises in former constituent parts of Russia and ringing Russia with missile bases?

Is this the same America that has bombed Afghanistan into rubble with massive civilian casualties?

Is this the same America that has started a horrific new war in Pakistan, a war that in its first few days has produced one million refugees?

“The peace and security of the world”? Whose world?

On his return from his consultation with Obama in Washington, the brownshirted Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared that it was Israel’s responsibility to “eliminate” the “nuclear threat” from Iran.

What nuclear threat? The US intelligence agencies are unanimous in their conclusion that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program since 2003. The inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency report that there is no sign of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

Who is Iran bombing? How many refugees is Iran sending fleeing for their lives?

Who is North Korea bombing?

The two great murderous, refugee-producing countries are the US and Israel. Between them, they have murdered and dislocated millions of people who were a threat to no one.

No countries on earth rival the US and Israel for barbaric murderous violence.

But Obama gives assurances that the US will protect “the peace and security of the world.” And the brownshirt Netanyahu assures the world that Israel will save it from the “Iranian threat.”

Where is the media?

Why aren’t people laughing their heads off?Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.


Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal

Failed States

This problem will not just be limited to Muslim States but there are other Somalias in Africa. The rich and poor divide across the world will become very ugly as people who are already on the border line of hunger become really hungry. The US will incur the wrath of peoples anger and when they overthrow their governments as they surely will, the people who come to power will be unfriendly to the US. This can have a domino affect not unlike what happened in South America. If Pakistan goes into unfriendly hands ( unfriendly to the US), the Afghan war can spill into the Central Asian Republics and topple Governments there. Failed States will be the biggest challenge to the world in 2009. It would be a good idea to identify them now and take preventive action. Pakistan has been a failed State for some time now and artificially kept alive. Unlike the Auto Industry in America, there is no chapter 11 for bankrupt countries. They must be saved or there will be a 1000 Mumbais.

Khusro

The Mumbai bombings

The Pakistanis have always been fond of pointing toward the hand of RAW in any domestic acts of violence even if it was a Shia/Sunni act of violence. The Indians have a similar bogey man in the ISI. The US has an equally ingenuous bogey man in Al Qaeda.

No one wants to recognise that the Economic Policies of all three countries have created a monster which up until now was unarmed but thanks to Afghanistan, they are now equipped with the latest weaponry.

I am not justifying the mayhem in Mumbai or Islamabad which were tragic but simply pointing out that just applying short term solutions or standard answers to a wound which has long been festering will not put a stop to these activities.

Kashmir has suddenly got the attention of the US, not because they care about the Kashmiris but because they see it as a distraction for Pakistan in their so called war on terror. The Mumbai attackers have suddenly put Kashmir back on the front pages. If this was their aim, they more than achieved it except that they never made their demands known.

Militants world wide must be watching with interest the new tactics employed here. This was a suicide attack with a difference. It grabbed media attention for 60 hours rather than 12. How ever no one claimed responsibility, no one made any demands and left the world guessing and pointing fingers.

The impact of this incidence will not stop at highlighting Kashmir. Here is what I foresee:
Congress will almost certainly lose the forthcoming elections in India. Had this happened a month earlier McCain might have won the US elections. Matters will heat up considerably between India and Pakistan ( including punitive Military action by India) and if there is a right wing Govt. in India, Zardari's days are numbered ( which they are in any case). There will be a repeat of this type of terrorism in the area. First there was just Al Qaeda, now there is also the Lashkare Taiba and Jaishae Mohammadi, not to mention the Taliban. These are stateless organisations whose reach is longer than people thought. They are getting better armed and do more planning by the day and they have millions of potential recruits and sympathisers, not just in Pakistan but across the Muslim world.

We have to be very careful how we react to these incidents. 9/11 changed the face of the world. The US went wild and caused untold death and destruction. If India treats this as their 9/11 and react similarly, then the militants would have achieved their goals beyond their wildest dreams.

The Conseqences of US policies will go way beyond any thing they had ever thought of ( See my essay on unintended consequences of US Policy). The Muslim population that is most asleep are the Indian Muslims. The atrocities of Kashmir never woke them up but if they start regarding themselves as part of the Muslim disadvantaged then India will have a huge problem on their hands. Pakistan is in any case is like a time bomb waiting to be ignited. The reaction of the Indian Government to Mumbai may well be the match that ignites it.

Khusro

Unintended consequences of US Foreign Policy

Preamble

I am not just interested in what went wrong but why decisions go wrong. My talk therefore starts with some conceptual assumptions. I believe that important decisions which affect the lives of millions of people need to be taken in harmony with the environment. There is a cosmic plan that is in motion and if we are not in harmony with it there will be a backlash from the environment. When we violate nature, nature will react adversely. We see this in adverse reaction of nature in the form of global warming.

Let me give another example. When we swim in a river and if we do not take into account the current of the river then we may have to use more energy and we may still not get to where we wanted to go. In all the analyses of what went wrong with the Iraq War one statement that is made is that we needed more Military or in other words more energy.

On the other hand if we swim with the current behind us then we will be in harmony with the river and more likely to get to our destination and reach it with less energy.

This is a large part of why there are “unintended consequences.”

Introduction

Decisions taken in a digital environment tend to ignore the analogue consequences of those decisions.

The preference for short term fixes results from a lack of foresight and vision.

Also when solutions are imposed on people by force, they tend to be short lived because the people affected were never consulted.

The carve up of the world after the two world wars, are all backfiring. Iraq, Palestine the rest of the Middle East for that matter are unhappy with those solutions and a roll back is taking place.

Destiny is built into History but never recognized by any but the few. The coincidence that the major oil reserves of the world are in Islamic countries or that the haven to Al Qaida is a no mans land called Waziristan are no coincidences. Do we understand that unless we partner with the environment, we risk ending up in the opposite direction to the one we intended?

Do we understand that whether we are interested in the so called war on terror or not, the war on terror is interested in us.

1.The rise of Islam

Reaction to 9/11, the attack on Iraq and the continuing support of Israel at all odds has sent a strong anti Muslim message. Over a billion Muslims world wide are beginning to view the US as seeing Islam as an enemy. Even moderate Muslims are puzzled and upset by this stance.

The Muslims, if they were at all united, which they are not, have been discarded to the dustbin of History ( deservedly so). So far they have been reactive only. Although being proactive is a much better alternative but a people pretty much asleep for the last 100 years are only just waking up to their vulnerabilities. Had it not been for Oil no one except perhaps Israel would have bothered to wake them up. My thesis is that the Muslim countries will be forced to unify as a matter of self preservation, that in the process they will overthrow the governments imposed on them by the US and that they will look to Islam as their alternate whether Islamic ideology has been thought through or not, in the modern context.



There has been a growing interest among Muslims and non Muslims about Islam. Islam is talked about and read as never before. Moderate secularists want to know if Islam is being unjustly maligned. Secularist Muslims want to know more about their religion in order to defend it properly. The Quran has become a best seller. The general population in Muslim countries have become anti US and the mosques on Fridays all over the world are full as never before.
The steep increase in oil, helped by the US threat of attacking Iran has helped fill the coffers of Oil producing Islamic countries and Russia. These countries feel under pressure to defend a Religion under siege.

The word Jihad has become the best known Arabic name in the English Language without any one knowing what it really means except something negative.
Muslim Nations hitherto poor, colonized or dependant on Western largess are beginning to realize that the West does not have their best interest at heart.

Although the economic or military stranglehold that the US has over Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan remains intact, the public in these countries are ready to overthrow their Governments, the moment there is a free and fair election. The prospect of anti US governments in these countries will lead to the closing of these countries to American Influence and a greater leaning for Islamic countries to look to themselves as a pro Islamic bloc. This would not be dissimilar to events in South America.


Muslims in America are getting better organized in order to protect themselves from unfair discrimination and beginning to take an interest in standing for public office. Even as the deliberate demonization of Islam continues, there is now one Muslim in the US Congress.


2. 5 million refugees in Iraq

Conditions in Iraq have created a huge refugee problem. Syria, Jordan, Sweden have all pitched in to help but there is a very large homeless population within Iraq. These people are not allowed to work in their host countries but most cannot afford to educate their children. The reasons that they are there is because frequently the men of the family were killed in Iraq by the US or the other faction in the Civil war. Shias and Sunnis who have been used to living peacefully under Saddam are now forced to compare their misfortunes now as compared to the better times under Saddam.
The massive refugee problem is just one side effect of a destroyed country. After 12 years of sanctions and 5 years of occupation and ravaging it is small wonder that the country is breathing. There are 5 million stories at the individual level each more harrowing than the other. The occupation of Iraq has been followed by the torture and displacement of Iraqis. If this does not constitute a war crime then what does?

“... There is a number of Iraqi women who are alone without families; whose husbands or families were killed and they remained alone, waiting to be re-settled. They face improper advances and molestation by this and that, looking towards a life more dignified and more settled, in some spot in this world.

At work, I daily receive women who were beaten and treated cruelly by their husbands. Poverty is the reason in most cases; or the frustration that befalls the man because of poverty and unemployment; they turn him into a wild, cruel, and aggressive creature. This is what happens to some Iraqi families here; the conditions of displacement, poverty, estrangement and degradation all put pressure on the men and the women and increase the rate of family violence…”



3. Loss of credibility in its belief in Democracy, Human Rights and other long held principles.

Reaction to elections in Algeria, Palestine, Pakistan and the continued support of Dictatorship in Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, has shown a US double standard to the world.
The torture of people not given a fair chance to prove their innocence. The mocking and violation of their religious and cultural beliefs.
The open contempt for the Geneva conventions.
Placing the US outside the purview of International law.
Resorting to a preemptive attack on a country which posed no threat to it and generally being bellicose about solving issues through the use of force has made people very skeptical about what the US believes in other than its own self interest.

The loss of moral authority has been one of the biggest casualties for the US image and no where is this more visible than in it’s handling of the Israel/Palestinian issue. Through not accepting the election results in Palestine and accepting illegal settlements, the US has become part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

4. Handing over power to the enemy

Removing Saddam has also meant removing Iran’s biggest enemy. This has promoted the Shia constituency in Iraq which has close ties to Iran. The successful defense of Lebanon by the Shia Hezbolla was also a plus for Iran.

Although Iran is regarded as US enemy number one, at every step The US appears to strengthen its hand. The US intelligence estimate shows that Iran abandoned its military Nuclear program in 2003, embarrassing all those who insist that Iran is a few years away fro a Nuclear bomb.

South America, once considered the back yard of the US has spun out of control. Left wing Governments in Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia have created leadership for the rest of South America and they want a lesser role for the US in the entire continent.

A resurgent Russia has taken advantage of the US preoccupation with the Middle East and feels emboldened to act in places like Georgia.

5. Lost opportunity to lead the world.

After the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, the US became the undisputed leader of the world. The victor of the cold war. It had a rare opportunity to become a non partisan arbiter of world policies and issues. Instead it chose to look after it’s own interests even if they were to the detriment of the rest of the world. It chose to pursue policies in International Law, Global warming , free trade, the UN and other common issues solely for the benefit of its own interests or those of the West and left the world in no doubt that it had to press forward not because of the US but inspite of it.
Sole Super Power status resulted in the Imperial Presidency and the tendency to use force as an arbiter of imposing solutions on people instead of an end to domination through power and a more consultative process.
The fact that the Obama candidacy was even more popular in Europe and the rest of the world speaks to the desire of the world to be led by the US and the failure of the US to lead it. There is a bright shining moment, with the Obama Presidency, when the leadership role can be assumed again or lost for ever.

6. Exposed Vulnerability to non conventional warfare.

Vietnam was the first exposure to guerrilla warfare but Iraq became the first encounter with the suicide bomber. The US was ill prepared and suffered heavy casualties and serious injuries. Like Vietnam, there is a strong commitment by so called insurgents to fight for their country while US troops suffer from doubts about what they are doing in Iraq in the first place. The extended tours of duty are compounded by the repeated exposure to civilians rather than another army. This impacts the morale of the American forces, who were ill prepared for this war and are likely to be haunted the rest of their lives by the senseless brutalities of their own acts.
Until such time as the US is able to deal with this type of war, their enemies in Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere are emboldened by the prospect of creating a stalemate even if they cannot defeat them.
A stalemate simply bleeds America slowly and creates unpopularity at home.
“If the global war on terror has produced one undeniable conclusion, it is this: Estimates of U.S. military capabilities have turned out to be wildly overstated. The Bush administration's misplaced confidence in the efficacy of American arms represents a strategic misjudgment that has cost the country dearly. Even in an age of stealth, precision weapons, and instant communications, armed force is not a panacea. Even in a supposedly unipolar era, American military power turns out to be quite limited.
How did it happen that Americans so utterly over appraised the utility of military power? The answer to that question lies at the intersection of three great illusions.
According to the first illusion, the United States during the 1980s and 1990s had succeeded in reinventing armed conflict. The result was to make force more precise, more discriminating, and potentially more humane. The Pentagon had devised a new American Way of War, investing its forces with capabilities unlike any the world had ever seen. As President Bush exuberantly declared shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, "We've applied the new powers of technology… to strike an enemy force with speed and incredible precision. By a combination of creative strategies and advanced technologies, we are redefining war on our terms. In this new era of warfare, we can target a regime, not a nation."
According to the second illusion
The Weinberger-Powell principles expressed the military's own lessons taken from that war. Those principles also expressed the determination of senior officers to prevent any recurrence of Vietnam.
Henceforth, according to Weinberger and Powell, the United States would fight only when genuinely vital interests were at stake. It would do so in pursuit of concrete and attainable objectives. It would mobilize the necessary resources -- political and moral as well as material -- to win promptly and decisively. It would end conflicts expeditiously and then get out, leaving no loose ends. The spirit of the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine was not permissive; its purpose was to curb the reckless or imprudent inclinations of bellicose civilians.
According to the third illusion, In the wake of Operation Desert Storm, "the American people fell in love again with their armed forces." So, at least, General Colin Powell, one of that war's great heroes, believed. Americans could be counted on to "support the troops." Never again would the nation abandon its soldiers.
The All-Volunteer Force (AVF) -- despite its name, a professional military establishment -- represented the chief manifestation of this new compact. The AVF embodied the nation's claim to the status of sole superpower; it was "America's Team." In the wake of the Cold War, the AVF sustained the global Pax Americana without interfering with the average American's pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. What was not to like?

An odd alliance that combined left-leaning do-gooders with jingoistic politicians and pundits succeeded in chipping away at constraints on the use of force. "Humanitarian intervention" became all the rage. Whatever restraining influence the generals exercised during the 1990s did not survive that decade. Lessons of Vietnam that had once seemed indelible were forgotten”.( Bacevich)

There is also the question of being in denial about the fantasy of being an unbeatable power. There can be no greater humiliation for the sole super power having the worlds strongest economy and the most awesome technologically advanced army to be thrashed for 7 years in one of the poorest countries in the world by a man sitting in a cave. The denial is so great that the US wishes at least in it's rhetoric to start another war. ( with Iran).

According to Dr. Roubini Professor of Economics at NYU, "US policy mistakes in economic, financial and foreign policies will steadily erode the power of the American Empire. This process will not be sudden and will take a couple of decades. But the trend is clear.”

Hawkish belligerence on the part of America which results in stalemates is the surest way of ensuring that the changes that take place in the world will be unfavorable to America.

Bibliography
Bacevich, The limits of Power.
Roubini Professor of Economics NYU

Decline of the American Empire

I have been saying pretty much the same thing for two years in fact my horizon goes beyond that of Dr. Roubini, the difference is that Roubini is a Harvard Graduate, a PhD and a professor of Economics at NYU. It is getting difficult to ignore him and last Sunday the New York Times ran an article on his views in their Magazine .
http://www.nytimes. com/2008/ 08/17/magazine/ 17pessimist- t.html?ref= magazine

To quote from the article posted:

"US policy mistakes in economic, financial and foreign policies will steadily erode the power of the American Empire. This process will not be sudden and will take a couple of decades. But the trend is clear: the brief period of unipolar power of the American hyperpower is now over and a new age of balance of great powers is starting in the world. Also, the rise of non governmental actors – multinational corporations, NGOs, terrorist groups, non-nation state powers, failed and unstable states, non-traditional global players – will radically change the traditional balance of power as the power of nation states will shrink relative to that of other global players."

His comment about the rising influence of non state powers is right on. One group that he forgets to mention is the internet. Our own yahoogroup is a microcosm of thousands who are no longer just exchanging jokes,health tips and articles of interest. They are expressing their own views and opinions and they are expressing them without fear of censorship. Many nation states fearing the impact of the internet are trying without success to curb them.

Governments are too afraid to tell things as they are for fear of losing power or simply to avoid panic. The state of the world today is no more dangerous than at other momentous times, the difference is that because of the information explosion it is there for all to see. If we are more aware then it places on us the responsibility to act. Whether this reaction is in the form of protecting our financial assets, our retirement nest egg or looking for a safe haven to live in will depend on each individual. The most common reaction is to go into denial and hope that the world that we have become trained in will never change.

I do not agree with the hope that Roubini expresses that there will be an equilibrium achieved by a balancing of power. The US will never allow this. They will continue to be in denial up to their last breath and unwittingly create a greater catastrophe then would happen with an orderly transition. We are already beginning to see that Obama and McCain are fighting to become the next Imperial President.

Khusro



Recent economic, financial and geopolitical events suggest that the decline of the American Empire has started. After the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a brief period where the world switched from a bipolar balance of two superpowers to a unipolar world with one economic, financial, geostrategic superpower, or better, hyperpower, i.e the United States. But by now three factors suggest that the US has squandered its unipolar moment and that the decline of the American Empire – as the US was in effect a global empire – has started.

Let us explain how and why...First, the US squandered its power by relying excessively on its hard military power in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan and in its unilateralist foreign policy – including economic issues such as global warming - rather than relying more on its soft power of diplomacy and multilateralist approaches to global policy issues.

Second, regardless of mistaken US policies the rise of other economic and financial powers – the rise of China, the recent resurgence of Russia, the process of economic and political integration in the European Union, the emergence of India, and the rise of other regional powers such as Brazil, South Africa and Iran – implies that the relative economic, financial and geopolitical power of the US will be reduced over time. We are indeed slowly moving towards a multipolar world where there will be a balance of Great Powers rather than the hegemony of a single hyperpower. While on military terms the US is still the only superpower even its military power is now restricted by imperial overstretch and its armed forces being bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan; thus, Russia has now been able to flex its muscle in its Central Asian backyard and humiliated the US – not just Georgia – in the latest conflict on South Ossetia. For the Bush administration having supported Georgia by words only and show its impotence – or unwillingness - to support an ally in spite of the administration push to have Georgia join NATO shows the limits of the American power. The US is at fault for effectively letting Georgia start a reckless attack on South Ossetia. Russia has scary and dangerous neo-imperial goals but deeply flawed US foreign policy of encircling a paranoid Russia allowed the worst nationalist tendencies of the Russian bear to reemerge.

Third, and more important, the US squandered its economic and financial power by running reckless economic policies, especially its twin fiscal and current account deficits. The last time around the current account started to go into negative territory in 1991 after a brief surplus during the 1990-91 recession. In the 1990s the growing US current account deficit was driven by a private investment boom – the internet technological revolution – and thus the accumulation of foreign liabilities of the US was driven by FDI and M&A activity, i.e the US accumulated foreign liabilities in the form of equity rather than debt. But since 2001 the further worsening of the US current account deficit was driven instead by growing fiscal deficits - especially in the 2001-2004 period – caused by unsustainable tax cuts and by the buildup of spending on foreign wars and on domestic security and since 2002 by the collapse of household savings and boom in investment in unproductive stock of housing capital that the housing bubble induced. And while the weak dollar is now inducing a modest improvement of the external deficit the looming sharp increase in fiscal deficits - that the current recession and financial crisis is inducing - will cause a return of twin deficits in the coming years. By now the US is the biggest net borrower in the world – running current account deficits still in the 700 billion dollars range – and the biggest net debtor20in the world with its foreign liabilities now over 2.5 trillion dollars.

The trouble with these twin deficits is multi-fold. First, superpowers and empires - like the British Empire at its peak - tend to be net lenders – i.e run current account surpluses – and be net creditors, not net debtors; The decline of the British Empire started in World War II when the British fiscal deficits in the war and the current account deficits turned that empire into a net borrower and a net debtor both in its public debt and external debt. That financial switch into an external debtor and borrower position was also the reason for the decline of the British pound as the leading reserve currency. And the British twin deficits were being financed by a rising economic and financial power that was a net lender and a net creditor, the US.

Second, the last time the US was running large twin deficits in the 1980s the main financers of these deficits were the friends and allies of the US, i.e Japan, Germany and Europe as the US external deficit was against these economies. Today instead the economic powers financing the US twin deficits are the strategic rivals of the US – China and Russia – and unstable petro-states, i.e Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and other shaky petro-states. This system of vendor financing – with these US creditors providing both the goods being imported and the financing of such deficits – has led to a ba lance of financial terror: if these creditors were to pull the plug on the financing of the US twin deficits the dollar would collapse and US interest rates would go through the roof.

Third, while it is unlikely that China, Russia and other powers would suddenly pull the rug from under the US feet – as such action would lead to a sharp appreciation of their currency and negatively affect their export led growth model – relying excessively on the kindness of strangers – especially that of your strategic rivals – is extremely risky. Since almost 100 percent of all US fiscal deficits since 2001 have been financed by non-residents – as US residents net holdings of US Treasuries have been flat since 2001 - by now the total stock of US Treasuries held by non-residents is getting close to 60 percent. And the foreign financing of the US current account deficits has also become more risky: less FDI and equity, more debt, more short term debt, more debt held by official political actors – central banks and sovereign wealth funds – , less debt held by foreign private investors, and more debt held by politicals rivals rather than allies of the US. This change makes the US vulnerable to such rivals using the financial terror weapon – dumping US assets and or reduicing their financing of the US twin deficits – in situations of geostrategic tension.

Suppose Russia flexes further its muscle in its backyard20– under the pretense of defending abused Russian minorities in Ukraine, the Baltics and other former Soviet Union or Iron Curtain countries. Then Russia could use its financial power – the ability to dump hundreds of billions of dollar assets – to exert both financial and military influence. So could China over time if trouble in Taiwan or other disputed Asian territories become big geopolitical issues. Russia and China are already winning the new war for the control of commodities and ressources through their investments in Africa and Latin America - in the case of China – and its domestic and foreign control of energy and pipelines in Central Asia in the case of Russia. China and Russia are indeed winning the new Scramble for Resources.

Fourth, the foreign creditors of the US are getting tired of financing the US in the form of low-yielding US Treasuries. Thus the switch of such reserve holdings to SWFs that are planning to make large equity investments possibly with actual control of corporate firms and financial institutions that are desperate for capital to recapitalize themselves. But this desire of our creditors to get equity investments – the gems of the US corporate world - rather than low yield debt instruments is hitting the political backlash of financial protectionism as the UNOCAL- CNOOC, the Dubai Ports cases and the likely protectionist reform of the CIFIUS process of approving FDI in the US suggest. But a country that needs to borrow from abroad 700 to 800 billion dollar a year to finance its external deficit cannot afford to be too choosy on the ways – equity rather than debt – that its lenders and creditors want to finance those deficits. The first rule of good manners if you are a guest is that you don't spit on the plate from which your host is feeding you. But in its creeping financial protectionism the US thinks it can dictate to other countries the form and the terms of the financing of its twin deficits. This attitude will not be allowed by such creditors to last much longer.

The ensuing decline of the US dollar as the main reserve currency will take time and will not occur overnight; but it is inexorable given the relative fall in US economic, financial and geopolitical power. Already Russia is flexing its muscle and pushing for an international role of the ruble; the euro is rising as a major reserve currency; central banks and SWFs will slowly but surely start to diversify away from dollar assets especially as the Bretton Woods 2 regime starts to unravel; and even the RMB may become the dominant currency in Asia in the next decade as capital controls are slowly removed in China. It will take little time – if the secular decline of the value of the dollar continues – for oil and other commodities to be priced in currencies other than the dollar or in a basket of currencies.

All these changes in the economic, financial, reserve c urrency and geopolitical role and relative power of the US will not occur overnight. But the trend is clear. The rise of the BRICs and other emerging market economies; the continuation of the process of economic and political integration in Europe; the US policy mistakes in economic, financial and foreign policies will steadily erode the power of the American Empire. This process will not be sudden and will take a couple of decades. But the trend is clear: the brief period of unipolar power of the American hyperpower is now over and a new age of balance of great powers is starting in the world. Also, the rise of non governmental actors – multinational corporations, NGOs, terrorist groups, non-nation state powers, failed and unstable states, non-traditional global players – will radically change the traditional balance of power as the power of nation states will shrink relative to that of other global players.

Whether the decline of an hegemonic power providing global public goods – security, free trade, freer mobility of capital and people, inducements to free markets and democracy, better environment, peace – will lead to a more stable world with many powers multilaterally cooperating on these global economic, financial and geopolitical issues; or whether the absence of such stable hegemonic power will lead to a more unstable world characterized by conflicts – economic, political and even military – among traditional nation states, great powers and non-traditional20ac tors is an open and difficult issue. But it is certain that the decline of the American Empire has started.

The Battle of the powerful against the weak

Excerpt

"It is simply a given that an American military commander – with or without a calm, steely gaze and complex calculus – should be hashing out emergency decrees with Central Asian dictators, launching missile strikes on African villages, driving hell-for-leather in bristling convoys down the streets of occupied cities, stationing warships off the coast of Lebanon and Iran… and continually throwing massive amounts of American blood and treasure into a never-ending campaign to "crush the ants" that swarm so inconveniently around the imperial boot heels. "

Editorial Comment

The quote above confirms a point that I have been making for some time. One of the subjects that is a taboo in America other than questioning Israel is the conscious pursuit of Imperialism. No candidate for Presidency is honest enough to say to the electorate that the cornerstone of American Foreign Policy is to be the next Empire. Sole Super Power somehow assumes that you have a licence to bend countries to your will. Every one wants to sugar coat the word Imperialism including the electorate. There is a dishonest 'wink wink' that goes on between the electorate and the elected to say we know what's going on here. Like in the case of Israel, the problem is not one of Security but of using a kinder word to define naked aggression.

Terrorism fits in neatly to define the enemy. Although terrorists are ants, nobody asks the question, why are you using a hammer to kill an ant. The sheer arrogance of calling Iranians ants bypasses the reality that the Iraqi ants
refuse to die after 5 years of reckless destruction of their homes, cities and livelihood, not to mention killing over 600,000 of them.

This is the other point I have been hammering away for some time that there is no clash of civilizations. It is really a war of the powerful against the weak. The stakes would be heavily in favor of the powerful but for one fact, "arrogance."

There is no greater arrogance then to perceive your "enemy" as an ant, you can crush any time. The lack of planning for attacking Iraq was based on this philosophy, that it was enough to put the American boot in Baghdad and the other ants would beg for mercy. Five years later, the arrogance has grown not diminished. An arrogant person is like a drunken person who remains unfazed by the reality of being repeatedly beaten up.

Here is the other point, if it is beginning to make sense now. In the battle of the powerful against the weak, the powerful will lose.

In my mind the writing is on the wall, the strong have already lost but are in denial about it. More importantly, the weak have won but don't know how they did it. Most of the victory is by the mistakes of the powerful but the weak have held stead fast and refused to be intimidated by a show of force. They have nothing to lose but their lives which are already not worth living. In the ratio of casualties for every 100,000 of the weak getting killed only 4000 of the powerful are killed. When 100,000,000 of the weak are killed ( like ants) then only 4,000,000 of the powerful will have died. Consider the power of this math. The powerful who represent a very small percent of the world will have been almost wiped out, while the weak would only have been dented. Will 104 million people have to be butchered before some one realizes that the Empire is the terrorist and that this is a war that the Powerful cannot win.

The British at the peak of their power had the good sense to realize that the game was over and exited India with all their might but not before one million people were heedlessly murdered. With all this experience, the British do nothing better than to hang on to the coat tails of Empire by clinging slaveshely to the Americans.

The biggest threat to the world today is the quest for empire by a country who lacks the muscle. The rhetoric coming out of America is frightening and laughable. No one is afraid of America today, not Venezuela, not Cuba, not North Korea, not Iran, not Pakistan, not Afghanistan, not even tiny Hamas.

In the meantime America is focused on electing a leader for the next four years not a President but a Commander in Chief. One who expects to be woken up at 3.00 AM in the morning by a breathless aid informing him/her that half a dozen people have just blown up the Capitol Building, which country or countries should we attack?

Khusro


Crushing the Ants
Admiral Fallon and His Empire
By Chris Floyd
March 7, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd03072008.html
There has been quite a buzz in "progressive" circles over the new Esquire article about Admiral William Fallon, head of U.S. Central Command, the military satrapy that covers the entire "arc of crisis" at the heart of the "War on Terror," from east Africa, across the Middle East, and on to the borders of China. Much has been made of Fallon's alleged apostasy from the Bush regime's bellicosity toward Tehran; indeed, the article paints Fallon as the sole bulwark against an American attack on Iran and hints ominously that the good admiral may be forced out by George W. Bush this summer, clearing the way for one last murderous hurrah by the lame duck president. The general reaction to the article seems to be: God preserve this honorable man, and keep him as our shield and defender against the wicked tyrant.
But this is most curious. For behind the melodramatic framing and gushing hero-worship of the article written by Thomas Barnett (of whom more later) we find nothing but a few mild disagreements between Fallon and the White House over certain questions of tactics, timing and presentation in regard to American domination of a vast range of nations and peoples.
Fallon himself has long denied the hearsay evidence that he had declared, upon taking over Central Command, that a war on Iran "isn't going to happen on my watch." And in fact, the article itself depicts Fallon's true attitude toward the idea of an attack on Iran right up front, in his own words. After noting Fallon's concerns about focusing too much on Iran to the exclusion of the other "pots boiling over" in the region, Barnett presses the point and asks: And if it comes to war? Fallon replies with stark, brutal clarity:
"'Get serious,' the admiral says. 'These guys are ants. When the time comes, you crush them.'"
The article makes clear that Fallon's main concerns about a war with Iran are, as noted, about tactics and timing: Sure, when the time comes no shuffling on that point we'll crush these subhumans like the insects they are; but we've already got a lot on our plate at the moment, so why not hold off as long as we can? After all, Fallon is conducting two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as overseeing an on-going "regime change" operation in Somalia, where the United States has been aiding Ethiopian invaders with bombing raids, death squads, renditions and missile strikes against Somali civilians such as the one this week that killed three women and three children.
The most remarkable fact about the Esquire article is not its laughable portrayal of the man in charge of mass slaughter and military aggression across a broad swathe of the globe as a shining knight holding back the dogs of war. Nor is it the delusion on the part of Barnett --- and much of the commentaries as well that Bush would ever appoint some kind of secret peacenik as the main commander of his Terror War. (Although it could well be that Fallon will be fired in the end for not groveling obsequiously enough to the Leader, in the required Petraeus-Franks manner. Or indeed, that he might even resign rather than commit what he sees as the tactical error of crushing the Iranian ants at this particular time. But so what? If he quits, someone else who would be happy to do the stomping will be appointed in his place. If Bush decides to attack Iran, then Iran will be attacked. There is no one standing in the way. It's as simple as that.)
No, what is most noteworthy about the article is that Barnett has given us, unwittingly, one of the clearest pictures yet of the true nature of the American system today. And that system is openly, unequivocally and unapologetically imperial, in every sense of the word, and in every sinew of its structure. For what is Fallon's actual position? We see him commanding vast armies, both his own and those of local proxies, waging battles to bend nations, regions and peoples to the will of a superpower. We see him meeting with the heads of client kingdoms in his purview, in Cairo, Kabul, Baghdad, Dushanbe: advising, cajoling, demanding, threatening, wading deeply into the internal affairs of the dominated lands, seeking to determine their politics, their economic development, their military structure and foreign policies.
For example, Barnett tells us that Fallon was locked away with Pervez Musharaff for hours the day before the Pakistani dictator imposed emergency rule last year. Barnett, hilariously, swallows Fallon's line that Washington didn't greenlight Musharaff's crackdown: "Did I tell him this is not a recommended course of action? Of course." Yes, Admiral, whatever you say. But did you tell him there would be any adverse consequences whatsoever from Washington: any cut-off or even diminution of military and economic aid, for example? Of course not. (For a glimpse of hero-worship, here's how Barnett sets the scene: "As the admiral recounts the exchange, his voice is flat, his gaze steady. His calculus on this subject is far more complex than anyone else's." A calculus more complex than anyone else's in the whole wide world! And certainly more complex than any analysis those ants in Pakistan could come up with themselves.) To his credit, Fallon then goes on to give the true picture: Washington supported the crackdown because Pakistan is "an immature democracy" that needs a savvy strongman and American loyalist at the helm. As for the idea that Benazir Bhutto then still alive could play a role in stabilizing the country: "Fallon is pessimistic. He slowly shakes his head. 'Better forget that.'" A few weeks later, Bhutto was out of the picture.
What we are seeing, quite simply, is an imperial proconsul in action. There is no difference whatsoever between Fallon's role and that of the proconsuls sent out by the Roman emperors to deal with the wars and tribes and client kingdoms of the empire's far-flung provinces. There too, the emperor could not simply snap his fingers and bend every event to his will; there had to be some cajoling, compromise, occasional setbacks. But behind everything lurked the threat of Roman military power and the promise of ruin and death if Rome's interests were not accommodated in the end. It is the same with America's pro-consuls today.
Nowhere in the article nor anywhere else in the well-wadded bastions of the "bipartisan foreign policy community" (and amongst its fawning scribes) will you find even the slightest inkling of a doubt that America should be comporting itself as an imperial power in this way. It is simply a given that an American military commander with or without a calm, steely gaze and complex calculus should be hashing out emergency decrees with Central Asian dictators, launching missile strikes on African villages, driving hell-for-leather in bristling convoys down the streets of occupied cities, stationing warships off the coast of Lebanon and Iran and continually throwing massive amounts of American blood and treasure into a never-ending campaign to "crush the ants" that swarm so inconveniently around the imperial boot heels. For the elite and, sadly, for the majority of other Americans as well this is simply the natural order of the world. Not only are these imperial assumptions unquestioned; they are unconscious, as if it were literally inconceivable that the nation's affairs could be ordered in any other way.
We should be grateful to Barnett. Not even the most scathing dissident could have produced a more damning indictment of America's imperial system than this fawning indeed groveling piece of hagiography.
This is not the first time that Barnett's true-believer cluelessness has produced genuine revelations. Last year, in a similarly gung-ho, brass-awed piece on Washington's latest imperial satrapy, the Africa Command, Barnett revealed that the Bush Administration was using an American death squad in Somalia to "clean up" areas after a bombing or missile strike. As I wrote in June 2007:
The Esquire piece, by Thomas Barnett, is a mostly glowing portrait of the Africa Command, which, we are told, is designed to wed military, diplomatic, and development prowess in a seamless package, a whole new way of projecting American power: "pre-emptive nation-building instead of pre-emptive regime change," or as Barnett describes it at another point, "Iraq done right." Although Barnett's glib, jargony, insider piece -- told entirely from the point of view of U.S. military officials -- does contain bits of critical analysis, it is in no way an expose. The new details he presents on the post-invasion slaughter are thus even more chilling, as they are offered simply as an acceptable, ordinary aspect of this laudable new enterprise.Barnett reveals that the gunship attacks on refugees were just the first part of the secret U.S. mission that was "Africa Command's" debut on the imperial stage. Soon after the attacks, "Task Force 88, a very secret American special-operations unit," was helicoptered into the strike area. As Barnett puts it: "The 88's job was simple: Kill anyone still alive and leave no unidentified bodies behind."
Some 70,000 people fled their homes in the first wave of the Ethiopian invasion. (More than 400,000 fled the brutal consolidation of the invasion in Mogadishu last spring.) Tens of thousands of these initial refugees headed toward the Kenyan border, where the American gunships struck. When the secret operation was leaked, Bush Administration officials said that American planes were trying to hit three alleged al Qaeda operatives who had allegedly been given sanctuary by the Islamic Councils government decapitated by the Ethiopians. But Barnett's insiders told him that the actual plan was to wipe out thousands of "foreign fighters" whom Pentagon officials believed had joined the Islamic Courts forces. "Honestly, nobody had any idea just how many there really were," Barnett was told. "But we wanted to get them all."Thus the Kenyan border area -- where tens of thousands of civilians were fleeing -- was meant to be "a killing zone," Barnett writes:
America's first AC-130 gunship went wheels-up on January 7 from that secret Ethiopian airstrip. After each strike, anybody left alive was to be wiped out by successive waves of Ethiopian commandos and Task Force 88, operating out of Manda Bay. The plan was to rinse and repeat 'until no more bad guys, as one officer put it.At this point, Barnett -- or his sources -- turn coy. We know there were multiple gunship strikes; and from Barnett's account, we know that the "88s" did go in at least once after the initial gunship attack to "kill anyone still alive and leave no unidentified bodies behind." But Barnett's story seems to suggest that once active American participation in the war was leaked, the "killing zone" was abandoned at some point. So there is no way of knowing at this point how many survivors of the American attacks were then killed by the "very special secret special-operations unit," or how many "rinse-and-repeat" cycles the "88s" were able to carry out in what Barnett called "a good plan."Nor do we know just who the "88s" killed. As noted, the vast majority of refugees were civilians, just as the majority of the victims killed by the American gunship raids were civilians. Did the "88s" move in on the nomadic tribesmen decimated by the air attack and "kill everyone still alive"? Or did they restrict themselves to killing any non-Somalis they found among the refugees?
Chris Floyd is an American journalist and frequent contributor to CounterPunch.

He is the author of the book:
Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium.

He can be reached through his website: www.chris-floyd.com.

The three trillion dollar war

Sample post

" When we went to war, they said it was going to cost $50 billion. We are now spending that money upfront every three months, and that’s not even including the cost of veterans’ healthcare and disability down the line. "

" When we went to war, they said it was going to cost $50 billion. We are now spending that money upfront every three months, and that’s not even including the cost of veterans’ healthcare and disability down the line. "

".. the Iraq war has been the most expensive war that we’ve fought of all of our wars, apart from World War II. World War II was, of course, a massive operation involving sixteen million Americans. And what is particularly striking about this war, and one of the things that leads to the long-term cost, is the very, very high casualty rate. In previous wars, in World War II and Vietnam and Korea, the number of wounded troops per fatality was about two-to-one or three-to-one. And now, the number of wounded troops per fatality is seven-to-one in combat, and if you include all of those wounded in non-combat and diseased seriously enough to have to be medevaced home, it’s fifteen-to-one. So it’s a very significant difference".

Editorial Comment

I reproduce below an estimate done by Stiglitz in Dec, 2006, which I had circulated at that time;

"Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, estimates the true cost of the war at$2.267 trillion. That includes the government's past and future spending for the war itself ($725 billion), health care and disability benefits for veterans ($127 billion), and hidden increases in defense spending ($160 billion). It also includes losses the economy will suffer from injured vets ($355 billion) and higher oil prices ($450 billion)."

His latest estimate has upped the estimate to 3 trillion and he feels that this is a low number. If you google Stiglitz, his resume is so impressive that you will see that he needs to be taken seriously.
To put it in perspective 3 trillion is 21% of US GDP and the spending is not over. If compared to the original budget of 50 billion, the cost over run is staggering. If some one had said the US is spending 1 billion dollars a day on the Iraq war, I would have fallen off my chair. In fact according to Stiglitz, they are spending 9 billion a day.
Granted that some of this expense is in the future but all that means is that future generations will pay for it. Thirty thousand Americans wounded in combat and twice that number wounded in non combat will be on the streets of America trying to survive on a meagre Veterans budget.
If the three trillion were spent within America it would surely have paid back handsomely. If the three trillion were spent overseas, it could have earned the gratitude of billions of people for a very long time. Poverty, Global Warming, Literacy, Peacekeeping, there is no end of worthy causes which could have been handled successfully and made this a better world for all of us and this would have included getting rid of Terrorism. Even if 3 trillion was spent promoting Democracy in the Middle East, it was sure to have succeeded given time.

OK so we made a mistake. Who could have thought that the Iraqi's would take this so personally. Is there any one willing to step forward to say, this was my decision, the buck stops here and I will take responsibility? Not only is no one ready to step forward, they are or were ready to attack Iran.

There lies the problem. We learnt nothing from Vietnam and we have learnt nothing from Iraq. When I say we, I mean the American Public. Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first take away their ability to learn from mistakes.

Khusro

Guests:
Joseph Stiglitz, Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is a professor at Columbia University and the former chief economist at the World Bank. He is the co-author of the new book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.
Linda Bilmes, Professor of public finance at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She is co-author of the new book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to take an in-depth look at the cost of the Iraq war. Last week, President Bush rejected charges that the war in Iraq has hurt the US economy. He addressed the issue during an interview with Ann Curry on the Today Show.
ANN CURRY: Some Americans believe that they feel they’re carrying the burden because of this economy.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Yeah, well—
ANN CURRY: The economy, they say, is suffering because of this war.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I don’t agree with that.
ANN CURRY: You don’t agree with that? It has nothing to do with the economy, the war, the spending on the war?
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I don’t think so. I think, actually, the spending on the war might help with jobs.
ANN CURRY: Oh, yeah?
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Yeah, because we’re buying equipment, and people are working. I think this economy is down because we built too many houses.
JUAN GONZALEZ: While President Bush claimed the war has nothing to do with the economy, one of the country’s leading economists has just published a book that puts an estimated price tag on the war in Iraq. The number may surprise you: $3 trillion.
That’s the estimate calculated by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and his co-author Linda Bilmes. According to the book, the Iraq War has become the second-most expensive war in US history, after World War II. For the past five years the Bush administration has repeatedly low-balled the cost of the war.
In response to the $3 trillion price estimate, the White House has gone on the offensive. White House spokesperson Tony Fratto told reporters, “People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can’t even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9/11.”
AMY GOODMAN: Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes join us now in our firehouse studio to discuss their new book. It’s titled The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. Joseph Stiglitz was the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, professor at Columbia University and the former chief economist at the World Bank. Linda Bilmes is a professor of public finance at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She served in the Department of Commerce in the Clinton administration.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Joseph Stiglitz, how did you come up with that price tag, $3 trillion?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, the way you approach this problem is basically adding. You begin with the budgetary numbers. But what they claim as the cost of the Iraq war in the budget is not the full cost. There are the operational costs that everybody understands, but then there are costs hidden elsewhere in the defense budget. But then there are really some very big costs hidden elsewhere, like contractors that have been the subject of such concern. We pay their insurance through the Labor Department.
But the most important cost, budgetary cost, that we haven’t talked about publicly, that haven’t been talked about, are the costs of veterans—their disability, veterans’ healthcare—that will total hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decades. This war has had a huge number of injuries, and that will mount, the cost of caring for them, disability. 39 percent of the people fighting, the 1.6 million who have already fought, and if we continue, it will of course be more than that, are estimated will be—wind up with some form of disability.
Then you go beyond that budgetary cost to the cost of the economy. For instance, when somebody gets disabled, the disability pay is just a fraction of what the loss to their family, to the income that they could have otherwise earned. And then you go beyond that to the macroeconomic cost—the fact that the war has been associated with an increasing price of oil. We’re spending money on oil exports, Saudi Arabia, other oil-exporting countries. It’s money that’s not being spent here at home. There are a whole set of macroeconomic costs, which have depressed the economy. What’s happened is, to offset those costs, the Federal Reserve has flooded the economy with liquidity, looked the other way when you needed tighter regulation, and that’s what led to the housing bubble, the consumption boom. And we were living off of borrowed money. The war was totally financed by deficits. And eventually, a day of reckoning had to come, and now it’s come.
JUAN GONZALEZ: We’re going to get into quite a few of those, but I’d like to ask you about the oil, in particular, because obviously many critics initially, when the war began, criticized it as a war to dominate Iraq’s oil. But as you point out, the price of oil has skyrocketed from about $25 a barrel to $100 a barrel since the war began. And what portion of that rise—you also try to attribute to the actual Iraq war, right?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, we were very conservative in our book. When we say $3 trillion, that’s really an underestimate. We attributed, in our book, only $5 to $10 to the war itself. But if you look back, in 2003, futures markets, which take into account increases in demand, increases in supply—they knew that China was going to have increased demand, but they thought there would be increases in supply from the Middle East—they thought the price would remain at $25 for the next ten years or more. What changed that equation was the Iraq war. They couldn’t elicit the increase of supply in the Middle East because of the turmoil that we brought there. So we think, actually, the true numbers, not the $5 or $10 that we used, because we didn’t want to get in a quibble, but really a much larger fraction of the difference between $25 that it was at the time in 2003 and the $100 we face today.
AMY GOODMAN: Joseph Stiglitz, the White House press spokesperson, Tony Fratto, said yesterday, “People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can’t even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9/11.”
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, I think the White House lacks the courage to engage in a national debate about the cost of the Iraq war. The Joint Economic Committee has asked the White House to come down and discuss the numbers; they’ve refused. Security is important, and we don’t deny that. The question is whether this war has been the best way of obtaining the security. And no matter what you’re going to do—you know, what you think about security, you still have to look at the cost. The costs have been important, even for the way we’ve waged the war. The reason the administration presumably did not buy, for instance, the MRAPs, these special vehicles that would have reduced the number of deaths by a very large fraction, is economics. So, you know, no matter what one says, economics is important, and the American people have the right to have an understanding of what those costs are. When we went to war, they said it was going to cost $50 billion. We are now spending that money upfront every three months, and that’s not even including the cost of veterans’ healthcare and disability down the line.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to continue this discussion for the hour. Our guests are Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes. They have just written a book called The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow. org, the War and Peace Report. Back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We turn to a clip of Andrew Natsios, the former administrator of USAID, the Agency for International Development. During an appearance on Nightline with Ted Koppel in April of 2003, Natsios predicted it would cost the United States $1.7 billion to rebuild Iraq.
TED KOPPEL: I think you’ll agree, this is a much bigger project than any that’s been talked about. Indeed, I understand that more money is expected to be spent on this than was spent on the entire Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of Europe after World War II.
ANDREW NATSIOS: No, no, no, no. This doesn’t even compare remotely with the size of the Marshall Plan.
TED KOPPEL: The Marshall Plan was $97 billion.
ANDREW NATSIOS: This is $1.7 billion. There have been—
TED KOPPEL: Alright, this is the first. I mean, when you talk about 1.7, you’re not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is going to be done for $1.7 billion.
ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, in terms of the American taxpayers’ contribution, I do. This is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges—Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada—and Iraqi oil revenues. Eventually, in several years, when it’s up and running and there’s a new government that’s been democratically elected, will finish the job with their own revenues. They’re going to get in $20 billion a year in oil revenues. But the American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.
TED KOPPEL: I want to be sure that I understood you correctly. You’re saying that the top cost for the US taxpayer will be $1.7 billion, no more than that?
ANDREW NATSIOS: For the reconstruction. And then there’s $700 million in the supplemental budget for humanitarian relief, which we don’t competitively bid, because it’s charities that get that money.
TED KOPPEL: I understand. But as far as reconstruction goes, the American taxpayer will not be hit for more than $1.7 billion no matter how long the process takes?
ANDREW NATSIOS: That is correct. That is the plan, and that is our intention. And these figures of these outlandish figures I’ve seen, I have to say, there’s a little bit of hoopla involved in this.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Andrew Natsios in 2003. He, at the time, was head of USAID, the Agency for International Development. Our guests for the hour are Joseph Stiglitz, who won the 2001 Nobel economics prize, he’s a professor at Columbia University; and Linda Bilmes, she’s a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, professor of public finance, and former assistant secretary and chief financial officer at the US Department of Commerce. They have written a book together called The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.
Linda Bilmes, your response to Andrew Natsios?
LINDA BILMES: Well, we have actually spent now three times per—we spent three times per Iraqi what we spent per European in the Marshall Plan. And the amount that we have spent in trying to rebuild Iraq has far eclipsed what Andrew Natsios had said, obviously. But I think that the whole story about what happened in the reconstruction is one of the many, many tragedies of the Iraq situation.
Here, you had a situation where President Bush tried to do the right thing. I mean, he went to a very reluctant congress, and he said, “Look, we have to have the money to rebuild Iraq.” And this was in the summer of 2003. Congress said, “Why don’t we loan it?” or whatever, and he said, “No, no, have to have the money.” The money was enacted, and then $19 billion was allocated for the reconstruction of Iraq, available in September 2003, which then mostly was not spent. It was not spent, because for the next six months, Secretary Rumsfeld essentially refused to sign a letter to the Congress guaranteeing that the contracts would be let by competitive bidding. And there was, you know, a ridiculous kind of hold up in the Congress about this issue of the competitive bidding, which meant that by the next summer, very little of the money had been spent. The Office of Management and Budget had rolled back a lot of the money. And by that time, we had lost the hearts and minds of Iraqis. By that time—it was now a year later—electricity was far down, all the things that that rebuilding money was supposed to be for—rebuilding schools, replenishing electricity and basic services—was gone. So it was an enormous, enormously bungled and missed opportunity.
JUAN GONZALEZ: You talk in your book also—the enormous cost of these contracts and the private contractors that are there vis-a-vis actual American soldiers. I think you talk about security contractors making as much as $400,000, compared soldiers making—costing $40,000 to the government—not necessarily making that $40,000, but costing $40,000 to the government. This enormous explosion in terms of cost because of the privatization of so much of the actual war and occupation.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: That’s right. And I think one of the problems is that the private contractors’ incentives often are not aligned with the national perspectives. For instance, let me give you an example. Going back to the issue of reconstruction, winning the hearts and minds, at the beginning of the war, the unemployment rate got up to 60 percent. It was in our interest to make sure that there were jobs for all the—as many Iraqis. But what did our contractors do? They brought in Filipinos, Nepalese, because they were cheaper. They were trying to minimize the short-run cost. But it wound up feeding the insurgency, because the unemployed young males, combined with the fact that we didn’t protect the caches of arms, was an explosive mixture which exploded.
The other thing that we discovered in the process of doing this kind of research is that when we talk about the upfront cost of the contractors, it doesn’t end there, because we have to pay the insurance for disability and death. But then, the insurance has a little clause. It says it excludes a hostile action. But, of course, when you’re in Iraq, most of the injuries and most of the deaths are hostile action. So the government winds up paying the death benefits and the disability benefits anyway. So it’s another example of really a largesse to the big business, and you can see the fact that there’s excess profits in terms of what’s happened to the stock price of the contractors, and most particularly of Halliburton.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we go to Halliburton, the issue of comparing the Iraq war cost to previous wars, you’ve done that, Linda Bilmes, like World War II.
LINDA BILMES: Well, the Iraq war has been the most expensive war that we’ve fought of all of our wars, apart from World War II. World War II was, of course, a massive operation involving sixteen million Americans. And what is particularly striking about this war, and one of the things that leads to the long-term cost, is the very, very high casualty rate. In previous wars, in World War II and Vietnam and Korea, the number of wounded troops per fatality was about two-to-one or three-to-one. And now, the number of wounded troops per fatality is seven-to-one in combat, and if you include all of those wounded in non-combat and diseased seriously enough to have to be medevaced home, it’s fifteen-to-one. So it’s a very significant difference. And this difference compared to previous wars is, of course, you know, a great tribute to the medical care that they receive on the field and the enormous advances in the care provided at Landstuhl hospital in Germany and other places. But what it means is that the United States has a long-term cost of taking care of many, many thousands of disabled veterans for the rest of their lives.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And, of course, as you have reported previously, the numbers of those disabled veterans and wounded as a result of the war has been consistently downplayed or hidden by the military in terms of what the actual cost to the Veterans Administration and the government is as a whole. And, of course, we’re not even talking about the potential illnesses from depleted uranium or other environmental contamination in Iraq that will be for decades to come an issue that the world will have to deal with.
LINDA BILMES: Absolutely. And this is one of the really outrageous situations about trying to get information about this war, because even today, if you go to the official DOD website, what you will find is a number around 30,000 wounded, but that is only the wounded in combat. Now, the number of fatalities, which is approaching 4,000, is wounded in combat and non-combat. But if you want to find the non-combat wounded—and that includes, for example, soldiers who are injured when they’re driving their vehicles at night, because it’s unsafe to drive during the day; soldiers who are wounded when they are being transported between one place and another, who never would have been there otherwise—it’s much larger. It’s more than double. And that is a number which is very hard to get. We had to use the Freedom of Information Act to get access to that number. It is impossible to sort of underestimate how difficult it is to get hold of information that should be completely in the public domain.
AMY GOODMAN: Joseph Stiglitz, I want to go to that point of using the Freedom of Information Act. You found out through this Freedom of Information Act request the government was keeping a second set of books?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: That’s right. I mean, one of the very disturbing things is that we went to war for democracy, and yet democracy is more than just having periodic elections. It really involves informed citizens being able to have perspectives on the important decisions. But to be informed, you have to know what is really going on. And that’s why it was, you know, so upsetting that we had to used the Freedom of Information Act to find out this or to find out, for instance, that while the government was saying, the President was saying, we’ll supply all the equipment that the military needs, back in early 2005 there were urgent requests for MRAPs, these vehicles that will resist the IEDs, these explosive device, and protect our soldiers, but because of wanting to keep the apparent cost down, they refused to order them.
And, of course, the total cost—and this is one of the important points we make in our book—the total cost is not just the upfront cost, but the cost that you have to face for decades later in terms of the injuries and, of course, the cost to the families. So, being penny-wise and pound-foolish means our country is suffering because of that kind of economic decision.
AMY GOODMAN: But I want to stay on this second set of books. So what is being told to the public is only half of the injured, is that right, Linda Bilmes?
LINDA BILMES: That’s right. And last year, after I published a paper on the cost to veterans, the then-Assistant Secretary for Health at the Pentagon phoned me and phoned my dean and said, “Where did you get these numbers?” And I said, “I got them from your website, which we now have access to.” And he said, “Oh, that can’t be.” And I said, “Well, look at your website.” And he said, “Well, fax me my own website.” So I literally faxed him his own website. And then he said, “Oh.” But—
AMY GOODMAN: Who was this?
LINDA BILMES: This was the Assistant Secretary of Health at the DOD, Winkenwerder, who left, was retired around the time that Gates came in. A number of people from that department were retired. He—
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Then they took down those websites.
LINDA BILMES: Yeah, but then, I mean—yeah, then they took down the websites, and there were websites at the Department of Veterans Affairs that were keyed into those websites, and then they directed the Department of Veterans Affairs to change the Veterans’ websites. And we only found out about this, because hundreds—hundreds— of veterans from all over the country started emailing me and calling me and saying, “Have you seen what’s going on?” So, I mean, we were in the situation where we were academics doing this research, veterans from all over the country watching these websites were coming to tell us this information.
But this kind of trickery has extended both to the budget and to the numbers in the war. And we see it right now in the President’s proposal for the FY09 veterans’ budget, where ostensibly the budget is being increased by $5 billion, but in fact, if you look at the fine print, they’re hoping to recoup over $3 billion by increasing the co-pays and all the fees on the veterans who need to use the services. And so, if you actually netted out, it’s only a $2 billion increase, which is less, when you consider the cost-of-living adjustment, than they had last year.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And you also detail in your book the same kind of flimflam going on with the soldiers who are recruited into the military, a bonus pay that they get that then, if they happen to be injured too soon when they get on the battlefield, they then have to pay back?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Yeah. I found that just absolutely astounding. You know, you’re doing this research, and you find things that—I say, “Linda, are you sure? This can’t be!” But they said—you know, the view is, they signed a contract to serve for three years. The fact that they get blown up after one month means they haven’t fulfilled their contract.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, what happens?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: They have to pay back the money.
LINDA BILMES: Congress is changing this. They’ve intervened to change this. But, I mean, Congress has been intervening to change some of these problems. Right now, there are eighteen pieces of legislation before Congress and a number that have been passed based on our recommendations.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Another example that sort of highlights this kind of—you know, some of this may be bureaucratic misbehavior, but still it highlights the kinds of problems our veterans are facing.
JUAN GONZALEZ: It also highlights the total incompetence of the people that are running the operation.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Exactly, like, I mean, one of the things—you know, they check out helmets and other equipment, because they want them to be responsible. But they get—then they lose their helmet in an explosion. You know, they’re shipped out, they’re disabled, they’re in concussion. Somebody in the military will send them a bill for their helmet.
LINDA BILMES: It was the GAO study on that, which is unbelievable, about veterans being—hundreds and hundreds of veterans being chased around the country for small amounts of money that they allegedly owe, mostly related to pieces of equipment that they lost during serious injuries.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz in this national broadcast exclusive, as they reveal the cost of war, a cost they say is a conservative estimate. The Three Trillion Dollar War is the title of their book, The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. We’ll come back in our conversation with them in a minute.
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