Sliding down in anger
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
"I
believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties
than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks
to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by
deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the
banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children
wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The
issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the
people, to whom it properly belongs."
—
Thomas Jefferson, 1802
“It’s
worse than you can imagine,” a Member of Congress confided to me,
referring to the downward spiral of the economy. “We just gave all
those hundreds of billions to the bankers so they would lend it and
they didn’t lend it and they still want more. The bankers don’t
know what they’re doing and Tim Geithner [Treasury Secretary]
doesn’t know what he’s doing. We all know this is the worst
economic slump of our lifetime.”
While
the arcane Washington budget processes — each Senator and Member
trying to grab something for his or her district or State — unfold,
the poor should start to worry. They have already lost or about to be
lose homes, jobs and health care. The propertied classes focus on
their major concern: their property, which stands immeasurably higher
in their moral guidelines than the lives and welfare of those without
or with less.
The
remaining masters of the universe on Wall Street still cling to the
idea of their own infallibility. “El Duce is always right,”
Mussolini said about himself — before the Partisans hanged him.
The
capitalists oddly enough believe in capitalism and have done all in
their power to spread the word. Their public promoters convinced lots
of working people that capitalism and the American flag go together.
Capitalism means freedom, so the very notion of nationalizing banks
— forget socialism — looms in their minds as akin to the Holocaust.
The
big bankers and their corporate brethren have connected to political
power, one step below them, by simply throwing money at politicians
who eagerly catch it. They also endow think tanks whose mavens will
then explain to the gullible public why the United States needs
perpetual war — to spread freedom (capitalism).
Count
the victims of this cavalier assumption. Since the 1950-3 Korean War,
U.S. forces have overthrown — or attempted to — governments by
force and violence in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Chile, the Dominican
Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Brazil, Iran and Indonesia. They
encouraged military coups in countless other nations in the third
world.
Until
the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, the battle against
communism justified the interventions. The Reds have since been
replaced as the demon by the Terrorists. Thus, Afghanistan and Iraq
join the victim nations, with Pakistan inching its way onto the list.
The
wars cost the lives of countless U.S. servicemen and women and many
more of the natives — in the name of protecting freedom. To question
the worthiness of service in any of the wars — Korea, Vietnam, the
Persian Gulf — became tantamount to questioning the flag itself.
The
mantra that surrounds the start of all the new wars remains numbingly
in place. The President asks young people to fight because the
nation’s freedom is at risk. Having said the magic words, the
President then goes on to suck money from the taxpayers to “win”
the noble struggle. Official language assumes “we” are good and
those opposing us are bad. Listen to what Gen. David Petraeus,
commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, told U.S. and European
attendees at a security conference. “To win in the
Afghanistan-Pakistan war, we need to identify and separate the
‘irreconcilables’ from the ‘reconcilables,’ striving to
create the conditions that can make the ‘reconcilables’ part of
the solution, even as we kill, capture, or drive out the
irreconcilables.” (Remarks at 45th
Munich Security Conference, February 8, 2009) Imagine a top British
general in 1776 making similar remarks to his fellow officers
regarding the populace in the American colonies!
“Reconcilables”
means those the United States can buy or intimidate to collaborate
with its policy goals. Some people would call them traitors. Later,
after U.S. forces withdraw and the “friendlies” become pariahs in
their own country, the U.S. government might reconcile itself to
bring a few of them to the United States — as they did with some
members of the Hmong people after the Vietnam War.
Bush
sent troops to Afghanistan in October 2001 to find and kill Osama bin
Laden. Somehow the mission has changed into one of making Afghans
reconcile to
a
U.S.-designed order. This has not worked in Korea, Vietnam or
anywhere else where U.S. troops tried to export our — now sinking —
way of life to people with different cultures. But it has been
expensive.
The
harsh fact, unmentioned in the U.S. media, is that the United States,
with its vast technological superiority and military power did not
win in Korea or Vietnam, cut and ran in Laos and left Cambodia in
such a mess that the bloody Khmer Rouge could take power there and
slaughter a percentage of the population. Similarly, Washington
policy “experts” do not reflect on the fact that all the CIA
coups yielded little of permanence. Indeed, the blowback from CIA
coups in Iran and Guatemala are still evolving.
The
coups in Brazil and Chile have eroded military power in those
countries and brought to the presidency socialists who have defied
Washington — something that would not have been permitted 50 years
ago. But how many of the powerful in the nation’s capital ask the
question as budget time comes around: how can we afford to continue
spending on wars we never seem to win when the state of our own
economy is in virtual collapse?
The
current military budget maintains “268 bases in Germany, 124 in
Japan, and 87 in South Korea. Others are scattered around the globe
in places like Aruba and Australia, Bulgaria and Bahrain, Colombia
and Greece, Djibouti, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Romania, Singapore, and
of course, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — just to name a few. Among the
installations considered critical to our national security are a ski
center in the Bavarian Alps, resorts in Seoul and Tokyo, and 234 golf
courses the Pentagon runs worldwide.” (David Vine, “The Costs of
Empire: Can We Really Afford 1,000 Overseas Bases?” FPIF, March 10)
As
the Congressman assured me, “the only thing that can put a halt to
this military spree is for the public to get wind of how much were
pissing away on this overseas nonsense. My God, it’s going to cost
more trillions of dollars than we see in this round of bailouts.
People have to start asking of the military budget just as they ask
of the bank bailouts: do these expenditures really keep us stable?”
The
rich and powerful think mainly about preserving and expanding their
wealth and power. President Obama must realize when the time comes
that under the emergency powers of his office, he not only has the
authority to seize our assets, but also has access to all the assets
of America’s richest men for meeting those emergencies that
threaten the common good.
It
has become apparent to millions of people that the nation faces a
severe crisis. One year ago, who could have predicted Congress would
bailout banks and monster-sized insurance giants, that GM would
teeter on the brink of bankruptcy and our fabled way of life would
become a joke for millions of recently foreclosed families?
Soon,
lots of people will ask: If we bail out the banks then why shouldn’t
we control them — or even own them? The bankers screwed up. Why
should they get any of our money? Maybe they’ll even question why
Congress should continue funding a massive military institution that
hasn’t won a real war since 1945 to the tune of some three quarters
of a trillion dollars a year?
Saul
Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies Fellow and author of A BUSH
AND BOTOX WORLD (Counterpunch A/K).
