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

To: stockman_scott who wrote (27616)	9/14/2003 5:54:30 PM
From: Rarebird	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 89467

Clarke is Not Worthy To Be President On September 7, President Bush addressed the American people. He made it clear that there will be no lessening of either the human or the economic costs of Iraq. Bush said that $US 66 Billion of the $US 87 Billion he will seek from Congress over the next fiscal year is for military and intelligence operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. In April 2003, Congress and Bush enacted a $US 79 Billion measure paying the initial costs of the Iraq war and its aftermath and for worldwide efforts against terrorism. President Bush said this: The US government "will spend what is necessary to achieve this essential victory" in the war on terrorism. "Our strategy in Iraq will require new resources. We have conducted a thorough assessment of our military and reconstruction needs in Iraq and also in Afghanistan." The Bush Administration is facing an "official" budget deficit of $US 475 Billion next fiscal year (it will actually be MUCH higher). Treasury debt paper will have to be sold and the buyers have to be found - somewhere. Governments around the world KNOW that it is they and their economies which are expected to fund a large part of the US military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Geo-politically, this will not stand. Even if the rest of the world would accept it (which they won't), they can't afford it. This situation cannot last geo-politically because the rest of the world has just seen the US, by military means, make itself the main occupier of an oil resource which is rated as the world's second largest after Saudi Arabia. Iraq is estimated to stand with 112 Billion barrels of proven oil reserves and may have reserves as high as 200 billion barrels. The US expects the rest of the world to pay the costs which the US will incur in becoming the sole "controller" of this sea of oil. It also expects the rest of the world to accept a situation in which the US will be able to dole this oil out to those in its political favour and withhold it from those NOT in favour. Again, someone in Washington is hallucinating. This situation will bring the European Union, China and Japan together politically and drive them all towards Russia (whose oil industry is now expanding by leaps and bounds). All Russia has to do is to stand back and let this threesome come to them. Russia, which throughout its entire history has never managed to get voluntary allies, will now find that it suddenly has three. The US will find that it stands with none. The US has grasped a poisoned chalice to only achieve its own geo-political ISOLATION. Rarely has an exceptionally large and well armed nation done a bigger U-turn than the one President Bush performed in his speech to the American nation on September 7. Short months ago, the message was: "those who are not with us are against us". Now, the message is a plaintive: "are you still with us?" This is such a stunning about face that it will likely take the rest of the world a while (two to four weeks) to recover and to work out what to do and how to do it. The simple fact of the matter is that six months ago, the US made aggressive war against ALL post WWII international law and without any valid UN sanction. Ever since, the evidence has been building up that the US had made NO plans for what to do when they "won". Now, the President has admitted to the world that the US does NOT have the means with which to succeed in their aims. The US is now holding out the begging bowl to the nations they characterized as "old Europe" and the "Axis of Weasels" short weeks ago. What clearer illustration could there be of the total intellectual collapse of the ideas which earlier underpinned US policy followed by the collapse of that policy? A strong front and a firm visage will be presented to both the American people and to the world, but to all the other hard men of politics around the world, this will be seen directly for what it is - facade maintenance. In the weeks ahead, three very large geo-political events will take place. The first will be a massive, improvised, and made on the run, US attempt to gain some global assistance through the UN to buttress its fragile Iraq situation. The second event will be a parallel scramble by the main participating nations in the UN to meet these US "requests", but to meet them to only a partial extent, thereby ensuring that the US will, in stages, be deprived of its ability to occupy Iraq. The third geo-political event will be the most important one, globally and in the longer term. It will be a huge scramble (all hidden behind the lead up to the 2004 elections) for the US government itself to find and/or improvise a NEW policy. At present, the US has no policy at all, it has merely expedience. This last event will be the global decider. The reasons for this are simple in principle. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the USSR in 1991, the US political establishment managed to get itself into a total internal stand-off between two diametrically opposed grand policy ideas. Both ideas stemmed from the fact that the US stood supreme strategically across the globe. One grand policy idea was to take advantage of this rare historical position. The present result of this grand policy idea has been to drive the US into the sands of Iraq. The other grand policy idea was one of Classical American thought and one that goes back to the origins of the United States. This was the idea that by staying globally UNENTANGLED, the US would be the exemplar of what a genuinely FREE people could do. The power of example would be added to the power of the ideas of freedom and liberty. In the process, the US would raise a global standard which would result in the people in other nations DEMANDING freedom and liberty from their own governments. The choice is internal Individual Freedom and Liberty or an external Empire kept in place by armed might. Americans and the world are being given a stark example of the consequences of the second choice. The first choice remains dormant but still very much alive in the Origins of the United States.