PolForest

Richard Nixon will be remembered for the wrong reasons but if due credit were to be awarded where merited, history will note that he understood that his country had no business defending democracy militarily in that area, and he therefore gradually terminated that unfortunate Vietnam adventure. He also initiated a personal rapport with the Soviet Union leader of that time, which was instrumental in initiating a background that paved a roadway towards an eventual satisfactory conclusion of the cold war.

In the mid-eighties Ronald Reagan theorized that he might avoid a war with the Soviet Union by increasing U.S. military spending to a level that their economy would struggle to maintain. With a cooperating Senate and Congress, he played his hand in 1985, and spent $486.5 billion on military procurement, a record that withstood the test of time for 20 years. This flexing of muscles may have significantly contributed to a resolution of the cold war. He had rationalized that the Soviet Union, being limited to spending but a fraction of that amount as a counter measure, and realizing that this situation would reoccur yearly for the foreseeable future, would recognize that peace and prosperity should be the option of choice for everyone.

George Bush I, was involved in a number of “tactical wars” which were highly successful, with limited loss of life, and one “covert war” also successful even though its cover-up defied the rules of credibility. In each case inclusive of Panama and the Gulf War, American forces under his orders, ended their incursions successfully and returned home.

Eventually President Bill Clinton, having no war to worry about and to needlessly spend money on, and striving to attain that political illusion, a balanced budget, caused the pace of military spending to regress and diminish to the consternation of the Generals the appointed administrators of wars, whose military potential is severely hampered by peace. The entire system of war cannot survive without a strong back-up of Defense Contractors, and a policy of Military Preparedness. By 1999 U.S. military spending had been reduced to a mere $261 billion, still 3 times that of China, and 8 times that of Russia, but perhaps too close for comfort for followers of the Reagan doctrine.

Enter George W. Bush. There was a need to capture and punish those responsible for 9/11 and few people would dispute the justification of the Afghanistan invasion, though most political observers regret that the job was terminated ahead of being finished.

The military establishment found in George W. Bush, a ready partner in the fulfilling of their frustrated ideology of recreating the glory days of excessive military supremacy. However they and he, believed that congress was overly preoccupied with such matters as job creation social reform and the economy, and were unlikely to view favorably unneeded military spending in a time of relative peace.

There is nothing like a war to justify bolstering military strength, so they had to find one. The War in Iraq is unlike all previous major military interventions of the U.S. including the Gulf War, since all those previous wars were considered to have had their base of justification, on unselfish and altruistic motives.

The unprovoked and unreflective Iraq invasion, notwithstanding the numerous other hidden agendas attributed to George W. Bush, may have had as a major contributing factor his natural leaning towards opening the floodgates of military spending, and thereby fulfilling the U.S. military establishment’s perennial yearning for a strong Defense Industry.

To the military, the price paid in fatalities, casualties and a severely wounded economy, may have appeared to be a minor factor to them and a small price to pay, for a critical resurgence of US military power. In 2006 U.S. Defense spending, including non-budgeted items is expected to approximate $525 billion, which hopefully should be sufficient to offset the total spending of the CIA’s recently categorized “Potential Enemy Nations” of the U.S., whose combined military budgets are expected to surge to $19 billion.

The perception that the Iraq disaster may have had its roots in the future well-being of the U.S. military apparatus, adds a new dimension of horror to a conflict whose perpetrators themselves now wish that more intelligence would have lined their military strategy. To the civilized world, this scenario could only have been created in the minds of souls severely lacking in humanity and could only have been implemented by members of an extreme political right group.

The radical right philosophy by its nature is quite simple and consists of the dominance of the few over the many, in this case within the confines of the political U.S.A. Their struggle should not be confused with the hidden agenda of the neo-conservatives, a movement created by Irving Krystol in the 1950s and whose stalwart proponents today include Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney, and everyone’s friend, John Bolton. Their motivation for getting up in the morning is to create an all-powerful USA capable of dominating the world militarily and thereby able to assist selected friendly countries and cultures.

George W. Bush has invited these radicals to assist him in his enterprise and has provided them with an open road for their own narrow objectives. Together they have failed miserably and only succeeded in bankrupting the federal budget, alienating traditional friends of the U.S. and creating a gamut of new enemies. Despite these results, they have now talked themselves into positions where they could now infiltrate and infect the World Bank and United Nations organizations, and continue their single-track interferences, with little true regard for the well being of American citizens.

G.W. Bush has a mindset totally oriented towards the concept of war with little sobering thought reserved for conciliation. He is a person who in his personal life and the country’s affairs sees only friends and enemies. If you are not with him, you are against him and therefore an enemy.. His total resources as well as those of his office and his country can in his mind be justifiably applied to defeat proponents of opposite views, within and without. He does not have the capacity to understand that two voices who do not agree may from their own perspective, both be right.

The Guantanamo situation provides significant insight into his true moral values, or absence thereof. He attacks Afghanistan and the Taliban Government, allies of the US in their War against Russia, and he gathers prisoners. To avoid the Internationally recognized moral obligations of the Geneva convention concerning prisoners, he coins a phrase, “Enemy Combatants” and ships the prisoners to Guantanamo, to further avoid US laws which would apply in the treatment of prisoners on US soil. This set the stage for what appears to be the planned mistreatment of these prisoners. Meanwhile reference continues to be made to the “War” in Afghanistan, a term which embodies the coexistent term “Prisoner”.

These prisoners it should be noted, for the most part were not mercenaries nor were they terrorists or “radical extremists”, to use his most recently coined verbalization. Citizens or not they were army soldiers of the Internationally recognized Government of a sovereign state, and they were repulsing the Army of an invading menace, much as they did against Russia, and they were responding to the orders of the official Government of that time, and they merited full prisoner status.

No one contests nor should they, the necessity of overturning a Government that provided safe heaven to the Sheik of Terrorism, and abused its own people. It is unfortunate that the well-earned reputation of the US in previous times of War should have been soiled by a President who lowers himself to the level of the enemies he despises.

He confronts or ignores some countries and their people, Iraq, Cuba, France, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Palestine, Canada, and most Muslim countries, all of which for the most simplistic and self-serving of reasons he has categorized as enemies. He favors others that he has identified as friends, China, Russia, Australia, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, England, Israel, Mexico, countries that he sees as his allies in his own petty personal wars, and countries that have not wasted the potential advantages that this could provide. With his limited understanding, one group can do no wrong and the other cannot do anything right. With him, objectivity lies in the shadow of his own subjective prejudices.

George W. Bush is not a neo-conservative. He surrounded himself with these sycophants in the hope that their agenda of dominance through power would prove valuable in the pursuit of his own silent wish which is to help perpetuate a wealth based elite class of families, companies and individuals of which he believes himself and his family to be major players.

His natural tendency domestically consists of allying himself with the powerful in all ways possible and since the formula entails the semblance of a war against the lesser classes, so be it. At every turn, every opportunity he has proposed legislation and taken decision with that orientation as a constant. His roots are from a family firmly embedded in old money going back generations, and involved in some war financings ably described in the movie Fahrenheit 911.

He chose a Vice-President whose lifetime occupation has been the accumulation of wealth, and whose social life is closely intertwined with wealthy individuals and companies. He, and his crew, designed a taxation system favoring the wealthy, while depriving the country of sufficient revenues to maintain a stable economy and divesting its average people of a lifestyle in keeping with their lifelong expectations.

He stands by while American companies seeking to lower their costs on the back of organized labor, outsource jobs to countries he has categorized as friendly.

He reduced provisions of the budget designed to monitor and prevent illegal immigration, surely with the thought in mind that he will thereby help to lower working class costs and favor employers as a class, whoever they are.

He created the reasons for a war that in a few years inflicted a direct cost to the economy, therefore to everyone, of more than $400 billion, most of which will find its way to benefit the few, the defense contractors and their controlling interests.