There’s an old joke that goes: Woman: “What kind of lady do you think I am?” Man: “I thought we had settled that and were just dickering over the price.” Well, we settled what sort of Senator McCain was when he voted for Abramoff, knowing that Abramoff condoned torture- and now we see that Bush has met McCain’s price.
I comment, for those of you who might still be thinking that this might not be exactly what it looks like- a bill to permit torture and violations of the Geneva Convention, I’d like to point out that Bush doesn’t need a new law to follow the Geneva Convention. It’s been signed by the President and passed by Congress, the Geneva Convention is (was) the law of the land already. A new law is needed to violate the Geneva Convention, legally. At least here in the US- in Nuremburg it’s a different question.
But it doesn’t matter, anyways. We settled what sort of country we were when we saw graphic depictions of torture being done in Gitmo and in Iraq, and we didn’t care. When we invaded another soverign country that hadn’t attacked us. We’ve declared ourselves an outlaw nation. The only reason no one has called us on it yet is that we posses the world’s largest military (and one almost as expensive as all the other militaries combined) as well as probably the worlds largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction of all stripes- certainly in the top two. That doesn’t mean we won’t face a reckoning, as Nazi Germany did before us. It just means the reckoning won’t be military.
My bet is that the reckoning, when it comes, will be economic in nature. We’re the first country to try for world domination on credit. The deal, ever since Korea, has been simple: the goverment could go and attack anything, so long as the American people didn’t have to pay the price. In World War Two, the nation sacrificed much. Gasoline rationing, meatless, wheatless, and sweetless days, a draft, tens of thousands dead, vastly increased taxes (the top tax bracket hit 90%- today it’s more like 27%). “Sacrifice” for the war in Iraq has been somewhat higher gas prices (but not even exceptionally high- adjusted for inflation, gas was more expensive in 1981).
So we do our wars of empire and conquest on credit. But that way is doomed to fail- because it means we can not, ever, attack our creditors. Because if you do, the first thing they do is yank their credit. At which point we will sacrifice more than our grandparents ever feared. There won’t be any Marshall Plan to look forward to after we’ve taken our lumps, pumping money into the country to rebuild. We’ve already used that up- this time the Marshall Plan came before the war, not after. Heck, even a FDR-like New New Deal would be much more difficult. With FDR, we still had the factories, they just weren’t running. We’ve packed our factories up and shipped them to China, India, Mexico, etc. Say hello to America: third world country.
I don’t know if it’s too late to prevent this. I think not- but the thing about windows of opportunity is that they close. And you generally don’t notice that they’ve closed until much too late. A warning sign that this window of opportunity is closing is that minor nations like Venezuela lose all fear of your military and stand before the UN calling your leader “the devil”. Why? Because we already failed to overthrow him once already, and we would be seriously hurt the Venezuela taking it’s oil off the market. The American people might actually have to sacrifice, and that breaks the deal.
But what I do know is that McCain is standing with Bush now- which means that if Bush ever stands trial in Nuremburg for his crime, McCain will be standing with him still. McCain could have stopped this, could have spoken up. The fact that doing so would cost him his presidential ambitions will matter not one whit to that tribunal. Nor to me, for that matter.
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