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SPECIAL REPORT: How Iraq is Being
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The Bush regime currently has wars underway
in Afghanistan and in Iraq and can bring neither to a conclusion.
Undeterred by these failures, the Bush regime gives every indication
that it intends to start a war with Iran, a country that is capable
of responding to US aggression over a broader front than the
Sunni resistance has mounted in Iraq.
The US lacks sufficient conventional
capability to prevail in such widespread conflict. The US also
lacks the financial resources. Iraq alone has already cost several
hundred billion borrowed dollars, with experts' estimates putting
the ultimate cost in excess of one trillion dollars.
Moreover, the Bush regime's
belligerent foreign policy extends to regions beyond the Middle
East. The Bush regime has recently declared election outcomes
in former Soviet republics as "unacceptable."
The "unacceptable"
outcomes are those that do not empower parties aligned with the
US and NATO. Russians view the Bush regime's "democracy
programs" for Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus as an effort
to push Russia northward and deprive it of warm water ports.
Russian leaders speak of the
"messianism of American foreign policy" leading to
a new cold war.
An article in the current issue
of Foreign Affairs, long regarded as a voice of the American
foreign policy establishment, concludes that the Bush regime
"is openly seeking primacy in every dimension of modern
military technology, both in its conventional arsenal and in
its nuclear forces." The article suggests that the US has
now achieved nuclear superiority and could succeed with a preemptive
nuclear attack on both Russia and China. Considering the extreme
delusions of the neoconservative warmongers who control the Bush
regime, the publication of this article will encourage more aggressive
assertions of American hegemony.
The article has "had an
explosive effect" in Russia, according to former prime minister
Yegor Gaidar. The fact that Russia's nuclear missiles are no
longer seen to be sufficiently robust to serve as deterrents
could dangerously unleash restraints on the neoconservatives'
proclivity to impose their will on the world.
The authors of the Foreign
Policy article write that America's nuclear primacy positions
the US "to check the ambitions of dangerous states such
as China, North Korea, and Iran." Neocons, of course, never
see their own ambitions as dangerous.
The Bush regime has succeeded
in committing America to a belligerent and messianic foreign
policy that means years of wars at a minimum and likely preemptive
US nuclear attacks against other countries.
How will Americans pay for
the decades of war that the neocons are fomenting? The Afghan
and Iraqi wars are being financed by the Chinese and Japanese
whose loans cover the Bush regime's budgetary red ink. Can US
nuclear primacy succeed in forcing the indefinite extension of
this financing as a form of tribute? Can the neoconservatives
subdue the Islamic Middle East with nuclear weapons without endangering
the flow of oil?
The classic method of war finance
is inflation. The Romans destroyed the intrinsic value of their
coinage with lead. When the US can no longer sell its bonds,
it can print money.
The US might have nuclear primacy,
but it no longer has economic primacy. The US economy has been
living on debt. In 2005 American consumers overspent their incomes
for the first time since the Great Depression. The rising trade
deficit is cutting into economic growth. Middle class jobs for
Americans are being lost to offshore outsourcing and to foreigners
brought in on work visas. Salaries in the jobs that remain are
being forced down. Adjusted for inflation, starting salaries
for university graduates are declining. Business Week's Michael
Mandel (September 15, 2005) compared starting salaries in 2005
with those in 2001. He found a 12.7 % decline in computer science
pay, a 12% decline in computer engineering pay, and a 10.2% decline
in electrical engineering pay. Psychology majors experienced
a 9.3% fall in starting salaries, marketing a 6.5% decline, business
administration a 5.7% fall, and accounting majors were offered
2.3% less.
Economist Alan Blinder, a former
vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve, estimates that 42-56 million
American service sector jobs are susceptible to offshore outsourcing.
Whether or not all of these jobs leave, US salaries will be forced
down by the willingness of foreigners to do the work for less.
By substituting cheaper foreign
labor for US labor, globalization boosts corporate profits and
managerial bonuses at the expense of workers pay. We are seeing
the end of the broadly shared prosperity of the post-WWII era.
Education and re-training are no protection against offshoring
and foreign workers entering America on work visas.
Americans at the lower end
of the income scale are being decimated by massive legal and
illegal immigration that has dramatically increased the labor
supply in construction, cleaning services, and slaughterhouses.
With incomes flat or falling
and prices rising, increased taxation to finance the neoconservatives'
wars of aggression is not in the cards.
The Bush regime with the support
of both political parties preaches democracy to the world while
ignoring it at home. Polls show that Americans are opposed to
open borders and amnesties for illegals. But a government willing
to dictate to the world is willing to dictate to its own citizens.
We are witnessing the American citizen's loss of his voice and
the rise of concentrated power. The primacy that the neocons
are seeking over the world will prevail over the American people,
too.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the
Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of
National Review. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
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