Talk Us Down
Would you like to react to this message? Create an account in a few clicks or log in to continue.

How Osama Bankrupt America

2 posters

Go down

How Osama Bankrupt America Empty How Osama Bankrupt America

Post by Cartoon Head Tue Jan 20, 2009 4:42 pm

http://www.antiwar. com/utley/ ?articleid= 14081

How Bin Laden Bankrupted America

The five ways
by Jon Basil Utley

For a man who spent years living in caves, Osama bin Laden sure knows his
Sun Tzu and the basics of jujitsu. Sun Tzu's famous dictum was "know
yourself" and "know your enemy." Jujitsu is based upon using your enemy's
strength against him, e.g., like Jack in "Jack and the Beanstalk," who used
the giant's own size and anger to get him to crash from his own weight. Bin
Laden understood that the way to beat America was to turn its power back
upon itself.
His early stated aim was to bankrupt America. He knew his own
weaknesses, and he profoundly understood America's, how its pride and fears
could trigger irrational, self-destructive reactions.

The genius of bin Laden's pinprick attacks, costing a few hundred thousand
dollars, has left America reeling with two unending multi-trillion- dollar
wars it doesn't know how to get out of
. He knew that his own strength was
mainly in his appeal to the minds of men, particularly to the lost dignity
of Muslims trampled under the heel of their own dictators, Israel's
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and America's military. Getting rid of
the "far" enemy was the way to take on the "near" ones.

Instigating America to destroy Iraq was a triumph of genius. He must have
known about the neoconservative cabal in Washington that was itching to
start wars and destroy Iraq. In bin Laden's wildest dreams he then imagined
that he could get an enraged America to destroy his enemies while, at the
same time, isolating itself from allies and becoming seriously weakened. His
prime Arab enemy, secular nationalist socialism, was embodied by the
Ba'athist rulers in Iraq.
Once destroyed, Muslim resistance could be
channeled to religious fundamentalism as the only remaining force honest and
profound enough to challenge Arab dictators and American soldiers
successfully. In that sense he was allied with Israel, again an intelligent
strategy of harnessing his enemies' strength, which, for different reasons,
feared Iraq as the most modern, secular nation among the Arabs far more than
it feared Muslim fundamentalists. Indeed, in Palestine, Israel built up
Islamist Hamas at first as a counterforce to the secular PLO. Successful
terrorists come from the well educated, not from fundamentalist fanatics
.

Next was his hope that he might get America to destroy his Shi'ite enemy,
Iran.
He almost succeeded in this too. His prime aim, though, was to get
America bogged down in endless, resource-sapping wars on the Asian landmass
and disrupt oil flows that benefited his enemies.

Bin Laden understood how America's religious fundamentalists, who had
inordinate power in Washington, could be encouraged to sustain religious
wars. He "knew" them precisely because he understood his own Muslim
fundamentalists, as indeed also the Israeli ones. All could work together in
his scheming mind to wreck the global economy, which so benefited American
power. In 2002 at a party in my home, I said to Peru's brilliant economist
Hernando de Soto that, of course, bin Laden's objective was to drive America
out of the Middle East. He replied to me, "Not just that, out of the whole
Third World!"

The actual crash in America came about because of the wars, in several ways:

First, financing the wars with debt was the final straw that broke the
camel's back. No one knew how much debt would break America, but doubling
the national debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion, with new trillions being
borrowed now, finally did it
. A government at war seeks political support.
Spending billions for an unpopular war and its waste makes it far more
difficult to deny billions for more welfare. That's why America is called a
warfare-welfare state. Welfare began in Germany in the 19th century when
Bismarck sought popular support for his military ventures. It was the
trade-off.

Second, the destruction of Iraq, and Bush's constant threats to start
bombing Iran, which could have closed down the Strait of Hormuz, brought
about sky-high oil prices, which then busted world prosperity. Still, bin
Laden might not have imagined that hedge funds would feed the speculation,
and that Bush would not release oil from the petroleum reserve, which could
have broken the price, because he wanted to keep it in reserve for war
against Iran. Then the subsequent collapse of oil prices dried up a major
source of foreign buyers for U.S. government bonds, which finance America's
wars and reckless debts.

Third, all of Washington's attention was absorbed by the wars, leaving
little time or energy for dull domestic issues such as debating reforms to
the financial markets. Anyone who questioned the wars' costs was dismissed
as unpatriotic. Lies are part of waging war, and losing discredits and
exposes the leaders' lies. From discredited American leaders, it was a short
step to discredited American financial markets.

Fourth was the toxic alliance of neoconservatives and religious
fundamentalists. The neocons were academic Washington policy wonks who
dreamed of ruling the world. The "fundies" provided electoral support,
because they viewed America as doing God's work among the foreign heathens.
Their extremists indeed wanted chaos in the Middle East to "hurry up" God's
plans for Armageddon. Instead they served bin Laden's goals.

Fifth, war spending deficits were in effect a massive Keynesian pump-priming
operation, bound in the end to leave an economic hangover. Wars make the
economy boom with seeming prosperity, but they are actually incredible
wastes of resources. Over $200 million for each new fighter plane, $1,000 a
day for mercenaries, massive corruption and incompetence in the military
occupation – even bin Laden could not have anticipated how costly the war
would become.

All of this was indeed foreseen by the wars' many critics, but they could
not break through in the major media against the powers and lies of the Bush
administration.

Editor John Feffer forecast the wars' consequences precisely in 2002:

"The successful realization of bin Laden's secret strategy will happen not
with a bang but with a whimper. Having failed to use the unipolar moment for
the world's advantage, the United States runs the risk of following the
examples of Russia and England and Turkey, all faded empires whose ambitions
overreached themselves. In the worst-case scenario, the U.S. will become the
sick man of North America, a victim of military hypertrophy, extremes of
wealth and poverty, decay of civil infrastructure, and loss of competitive
economic advantage."

At least Americans are told that Washington "succeeded" in preventing any
more attacks on the homeland. Maybe, but the more likely reason there have
been no further attacks was explained in a letter to the editor of Foreign
Policy magazine [.pdf] by researcher Laura Garcés:

"But one could venture that Osama bin Laden has no reason now to expose
himself and expend massive resources when he accomplished exactly what he
wanted: billions of dollars of expenditures in launching wars, the total
neglect of infrastructure, the loss of thousands of tourists who are wary of
staying in line for hours dealing with airport. Decay and bankruptcy is what
he sought, and fear is what he wanted to instill. Can anyone doubt that he
succeeded?"

Cartoon Head

Number of posts : 1661
Registration date : 2009-01-13

Back to top Go down

How Osama Bankrupt America Empty Re: How Osama Bankrupt America

Post by catch-22 Sun Jan 25, 2009 4:56 am

If Osama is dead, he probably died laughing! Laughing Laughing Laughing

A long article but well worth the time to read it!

catch-22

Male
Number of posts : 283
Registration date : 2009-01-15

Back to top Go down

Back to top

- Similar topics

 
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum