Daily Reckoning
Bill Bonner back in London...
*** "Consumer sentiment sinks in U.S.," says an Associated Press headline. Elsewhere we find out that consumers in California are especially gloomy. Perhaps it is the rising mortgage rates that are bothering people. The average fixed 30-year rate rose to 5.79% last week.
*** Businesses are said to be feeling more confident, by contrast. The Financial Times reports that business spirits are being buoyed by higher than expected earnings.
*** Readers are hereby warned: with little market news to discuss, we default to politics. Not that we know anything about it; but it is more entertaining than celebrity gossip.
*** Friday night's dinner discussion - in fact every dinner's discussion for the last week or so - was dominated by the situation in Iraq. We have a tremendous advantage in these arguments: almost total ignorance. We never understood what the war was all about. We merely read Thomas Friedman's marvelously loony editorials and laughed. There may or may not have been some good reason for going to war in Iraq, but whatever it was, nobody in the media seemed to know. Typically, Friedman had many opinions, but no clue.
Knowing no more about the facts than Friedman, we fell back on theory. "Nature hates vacuums, monopolies, and bubbles," we explained to a Frenchwoman who wondered how Americans could be so stupid. "I liked Bush," she had begun. "But I just can't believe he knows what he's doing. He seems intent upon rousing every Muslim in the world to join a holy war against us all."
We continued:
"After the collapse of the Cold War in 1989, Americans found themselves in the same position as Napoleon after the treaty of Tilsit. No power in Europe could oppose him; so all of them had to.
"Americans currently enjoy a bubble in debt... a bubble of confidence... a real estate bubble in some areas... a near-bubble in the stock market... and a military bubble. All bubbles have to find their pins as best they can.
"With no conventional forces capable of standing against American military might, we had to find unconventional ones. Somehow a balance of power has to be reestablished. In this regards, the country has been making great strides economically, ruining itself at great speed. But militarily, it has been a challenge, because the rest of the world is so weak and feckless. The Europeans don't want to fight... and the Arabs can't.
"But along came 9/11. Only a handful of homicidal fanatics were actually involved in planning and executing the attack - and many of them were dead - but if the event could be turned into a "clash of civilizations" nature might be appeased.
"The trouble with declaring war against terrorism was that there were so few terrorists around and those that were still alive after 9/11 were apparently not very good at it. After pounding Afghanistan and chasing the world's leading terrorist into caves... and then stomping through Iraq... killing thousands of people - the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with terrorism - the terrorists were not able to land a single blow to the U.S. Not even a rural post-office or volunteer fire department was hit. Even in Iraq itself, it was a struggle to generate significant opposition. Saddam Hussein had so terrorized the dominant group - the Shiites - that they practically welcomed
the invasion.
"But the pin seems to be getting sharper. The newspapers tell us that everybody now hates America... including our own allies. Today's TIMES tells of a huge demonstration in Madrid. "Murderers!" shouted the crowd. Against the terrorist bombers? No. It was against the U.S. for stirring up so much trouble.
"Throughout the Islamic world, young men are now preparing for war with America. The U.S. has unified people who wouldn't talk to each other before. We've helped to bring a sense of purpose and common cause to the whole region; they're all determined to kill us.
"In Iraq, for example, against all odds, the U.S. seems to have turned an important Shiite leader against us. That was an achievement. Because the man's own father and two brothers were killed by Saddam's regime. You'd think he would be grateful."
*** "Can a third party nation really "give" democracy to another people?" wonders our unpaid correspondent from Pittsburgh, Byron King.
"Can any nation really "make the world safe for democracy" per Mr. Wilson? What if these other people don't want democracy, or collectively don't understand it, or culturally can't deal with it?
Heck, do we really understand it here in the U.S.? By comparison, in the early days of the U.S. Republic only property owners could vote (ie, relatively wealthy, white males). State legislatures were usually owned by railroads, coal companies, banks, etc., certainly in Pennsylvania! It took until 1921 for women to get the vote. And it took until the 1960s for blacks to be able to vote in significant numbers in some states. So we are going to do "Instant Democracy" in Iraq? Just add water and stir? Voila, democratic process to rival Vermont town halls? Or is it more like: Voila, democratic process to rival Tammany Hall? Hitler and Mussolini both were "voted" into power. Stalin held frequent elections, with predictable results. So what is this "democracy" thing that we are doing?
The deep-thinkers of the E-Ring talk about Iraq as if we can "rebuild" that nation in a better way, similar to reconstructing Germany or Japan post-WWII. I think that they are thinking so deep that they forgot to come up for air.
But I do not want to be accused of being without hope. I have to wonder if the U.S. presence in Iraq is more akin to a large version of the British-Australian invasion at Gallipoli, 25 April 1915 (89 years ago this month). Seemed like a good idea beforehand. Invade and seize land. But then, it turned into... Hold for a while. Take casualties. Take more casualties. Get tired of taking casualties. Then pack up and leave. A few years later, one of the Turkish heroes of the campaign, Kemal Ataturk, who commanded the 19th Turkish Division, took power, threw the Mullahs out of politics and secularized Turkey. And then he forgave the invaders, and honored their graves saying: "You the Mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears, your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."
I wonder if, among the young militiamen and jihadists fighting the Coalition Forces, there is a budding Ataturk?" |
