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Monthly Archives: May 2015
Saudi Arabia: The Price of Influence!
From around the world the U.S. Government has come to be seen as a prize of influence. Buy it, trade for it and/or submit to it and you’ve assured yourself of an influence that packs a punch in military, political and/or economic/financial terms; or so it would seem. What many countries have learned is that there is a declining prize value. This is primarily due to the ever changing interests of the forces driving the machinery of influences that is the U.S. Government and this Government will drop you, like a constitutional provision, at the first sign of a better opportunity.
ISIS, Iraq and Wasted Treasure!
Another Memorial Day has come and gone; a day when a Nation honors its own for their sacrifice including those Veterans who’ve served in the longest-running period of war-commitment in U.S. History; the Middle-East variants. The American people want to honor their warriors and they go to great lengths to do so and yet I observe a rather peculiar awkwardness in the relationship between civilians and their warrior-class.
The public is most sincere in their affection for their warriors and yet avoid wanting to own the “why” behind what they and their families actually deal with while in the performance of the “why.” It’s as if the public has resigned itself to accepting that the U.S. Government is going to send a select portion of the U.S. population off, in their name, to do something having to do with making the world safe for democracy or for some security/economic interest and that it is somehow more rationally survivable for the public to remain detached from the fact that for whatever the reason these warriors are returning to their homeland permanently damaged or dead.
Presently we can observe the next wave of drivel seeping thru the vanity of media outlets shaping the losses in Iraq as one of the greatest U.S. military embarrassments since Vietnam; how completely mindless and supremely cannibalistic can we possibly get! Yes, the Middle-East misadventure has parallels to Vietnam the key being that like Vietnam the impetus for action was based on a complete lie (Gulf of Tonkin vs. Weapons of Mass Destruction), but in either case the outcome was never a function of military failure. Like Vietnam, the military function was not a prohibitive condition for success. The failure was in the bureaucracy of U.S. Policy and I suspect that for as long as the U.S. continues to express its policy forum via its military apparatus this outcome is likely to continue. As will the parade of damaged goods looking for a connection to a purpose that justifies having willingly given its all; some thing or some type of explanation for the various illusions camouflaged by a flag.
If we ever hope to have ever been meaningful then we’re going to have to insist that being meaningful means everything!
The following are a select group of responses to questions/comments received after the original article was published.
#1: “If we ever hope to have ever been meaningful then we’re going to have to insist that being meaningful means everything! ” Yes, this phrase appears precisely as intended. Somehow we’ve got to come clean on all this…..we’ve got to be totally clear that when you redefine what constitutes Freedom (and Liberty) you then also redefine the concept of what you believe Freedom (and its expressing tool,…Liberty) are. The moment you do this is also the moment you toss the very capacity that brought you that privilege. This too, is an absolute!
#2: In a day or so a post will appear, a shortened version of an op-ed I wrote, that makes a similar though less acute observation. Though I would tend to agree the “left” has been reckless in their approach to the issue, specifically related to the soldiers and crosses the political and hyperbolic rift. The tragedy as I see it is that we are not, even remotely, cognizant of the greater price; the real cost of a national policy that is, in essence, a permanent war-footing. I liken it to the Abortion and Same-Sex issue(s); a reckless ambivalence that has poisoned an entire culture. There is a huge cost already accumulating for all of this idio-audacity (new word) that few dare to consider. More on this (ideo-audacity) to come.
#3: There’s a need and sound purpose for a military force and I would even go so far as to say one that is well funded and even best equipped-a decidedly potent deterrent force. Like you, I abhor the use of the military as strictly an offense force used to project the economic interests of a select few-end of story and let’s be clear that’s all that it presently is. If we are unable/unwilling to project the strength of this nation from the fulcrum & lever that is our moral compass, our value of life, the richness and vitality of our national community sustained by our creative and productive capacity secured by the oversight of a strictly limited government then, in the absence of which (as it presently is) one can easily understand why this nation has devolved into a warehouse of predators. And, that’s all there is to say about that!
Curtis C. Greco, Founder
Extending the Patriot Act
The answer is, quite simply, no; absolutely no! Somewhere in the mix of alarm, fear and necessity is an illogical and irrational sense of purpose and it’s always retroactive. As with the case of any threat the validity of the same is only ever observed after the fact and all too often used as a tool for a most and far more deceptive threat that has nothing to do with an external force.
Debt Ceiling Debate No More
Having gone unnoticed is the now silent political contest over the Debt Ceiling. Concurrent with the advent of the Obama Administration and along with it the explosion in Federal Debt, the Debt Limit argument has become a perennial event.
The sudden switch to apathetic political resolve has many reasons & the key elements are:
(1) The Temporary Debt Limit Extension Act (2/2014) that “suspends” the Debt Ceiling.
(2) Sequestration which, in part, has capped certain elements of the Budget.
(3) Political realities have taught the Republicans (and the Democrats) that forcing government shutdowns brings with it a near un-survivable political price.
Posted in Poli-Econ, Poli-Philos
Tagged Debt Ceiling, Debt Limit Extension Act, Federal Debt
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WiNiP | What I Noticed in Passing forms the following question:
When you negate a component of the foundation upon which your premise stands do you not then defeat the entire structure upon which your premise/ambition is based?
Examples: When you surrender your liberty are you still (really) free to make any choice? Or, another way of pitching the point: If your choices are limited only to those made available is one truly at liberty to freely choose? If your concept of Freedom is the liberty to make a choice then does it not also require one to be free from the imposition of consequence occurring from the choice made by another?