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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: abuelita who wrote (25013)	8/10/2003 3:32:44 PM
From: Rarebird	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

At rock bottom, the Bush Administration is asking Americans to sacrifice precisely those principles which form the American ethos. It is asking them to extol America by giving up that which made every individual in the United States an American. It is the personal and individual FREEDOM and LIBERTY which made America and Americans great which the Bush Administration intends to sacrifice. Through the long political campaign towards the next presidency, the Bush Administration will be trying to switch or anchor American perceptions in or towards the self-made external distraction of Iraq and on the great enterprise of rebuilding and "democratising" the Middle East. Each time any American tries to swing perceptions internal, i.e. inside the USA, the Bush Administration will respond by having the new Office of Homeland Security hoist the multi-color coded terror alert flags either higher or lower. This is contained in the "twin deficits", the budget deficit of $US 455 Billion which amounts to 5.1% of US GDP and the current account deficit of $US 545 Billion this year (which is expected to climb to around $US 700 Billion next year). Add them together and you get exactly $US 1 TRILLION! But if the budget deficit alone amounts to 5.1% of the US GDP, then the budget deficit and current account deficit combined amounts to 11.2% of the total current US GDP. Both of these super deficits have to be funded by Americans, but Americans don't save enough to come close. A large proportion of the deficit is funded by the rest of the world's savers. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) recently pointed out that it takes 80% of the rest of the world's net financial savings to fund the US deficit on its current account alone. The end result, in full global terms, is that with only 20% of net free financial savings still left in the rest of the world, the combined US deficits CANNOT be funded. The Bush Administration CANNOT politically afford ANY sustained internal political look at the state of Americans' own individual Freedom and Liberty. This is what the endless war against "terror" is designed to accomplish: Look at the enemy without - so you cannot see the enemy within. That is the statement which sums up an in depth study of the political sentiment across all of continental Europe. Such a sentiment, which is not only now to be seen in European leading political circles but is also to be seen in national surveys from the general European population, signals that the old foundation which had previously underpinned the US/European Trans-Atlantic alliance has been eroded away. The United States asserts that since 9/11, everything has changed. Europe disagrees with this entirely. From Europe's historical perspective, terrorism is a near constant, though disagreeable part of the political landscape. Europeans have lived with it through all of their political history. In Great Britain, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had the hotel she stayed in with her Cabinet blown apart by the IRA and in Italy, the old Red Brigades of the Seventies kidnapped and then killed an Italian Prime Minister. Spain has been pestered by SETA, the Basque independence movement, for decades. And so it goes on. After each outrage, the damage is repaired and both normal life and political life goes on. As far as the Europeans are concerned, the central thing that has changed is US policy. This is a US policy which Europe sees as unsustainable over time and therefore, when time runs out, a policy which will leave untold political wreckage in its wake which will take decades to fix. It is this assured future political wreckage left in the wake of the current US policy which Europe sees as a growing threat to itself. Once the US either gives up or retreats from the Middle East in near total exhaustion, Europe knows that it will have to pick up the broken pieces across the Middle East and then try to fix the damage with NO assistance from the United States. Europe is, in this context, haunted by the echoes of Vietnam but not in the same way that the United States is. Politically, Europe well remembers that the United States gave its word to South Vietnam in solemn treaties that they would keep supplying South Vietnam with the military means with which to defend itself. But they didn't. In Congress, a few simple amendments to some spending bills cut South Vietnam off totally - and South Vietnam fell. In looking ahead to the expected future debacle issuing from the Bush Administration's Middle East policy, Europe expects the US to retreat from its enterprise and do so in such a final rush that it will leave large parts of the Middle East in complete turmoil. Israel, which would see itself as standing alone, would be faced with the choice of making pre-emptive strikes of its own (possibly even nuclear) to forestall acts of revenge on the main client state of the US - which is what happened to South Vietnam. Europe now expects an abrupt future US withdrawal from the Middle East, leaving the Muslim world in a white rage. As Europe itself presently has millions of Muslims living mostly peacefully all across the landscape, Europe sees a growing internal risk that these European Muslims will likewise be stirred up. THAT is what Europe sees as the now growing real risk to its own INDEPENDENCE. To avoid this outcome, Europe will distance itself from the US and the alliance will break apart. "Cash is King" insofar as holding cash in money market accounts outperforms holding cash in the S@P over the longer term.