Paying the Piper

The Aragon was a cock-up, the Yank said.
No artillery, no plans, no timing, no leaders,
everybody running around like rabbits
--from Moment of War, Laurie Lee (1991)

To compare terrorism with an all-encompassing
ideology like communism and fascism is evidence
of profound confusion
--Sen Joseph Biden [D-DE]
(from "Republicans and our Enemies")

Where's your shame
You've left us up to our necks in it
--Changes, David Bowie
_____________

The true-blue cheerleaders of the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) are right about one thing: they do want to destroy our way of life. Except the "they" are members of the National Command Authority to include partisan lawyers justifying the Dr. Jekyll nature of U.S. policy.

Two of the worst of the worst, David Addington and "puling scrivner Yoo" (as beautifully embodied by fellow blogger FDChief here) recently testified before Congress to little fanfare. Two men who should raise the righteous ire of any self-respecting Democratic member of Congress, raised nary a whimper.

What is changing our lives and destroying our freedoms are the actions and inactions of our elected leaders. Our lives are being diminished by federal operating deficits in excess of $500 billion per year, the punishing costs of elective phony wars, the skyrocketing price of oil and gas and all that devolves from that and the price of everything rises due to the devaluation of the dollar, the inevitable result of a broken consumer economy. One figure guaranteed not to rise anytime soon is the average paycheck or subsidy allowance.

The threat to the U.S. is not posed by terrorists. The threat is posed by willful ignorance by all players of the ugly issues facing our boy-in-the-bubble societal mindset, or as Steve Pearlstein in WaPo called it, our "mirage economy." Forget Iraq and Afghanistan -- who will pay the piper when the jig is up?

Those regions will both survive without our beneficence. They function as costly distraction, much as the pathologized member of a triangulation functions in a family system. The war hawks can project and focus the ire of a population on The Other for a time, but eventually, when the floor drops out from beneath them the citizens will notice.

Most still accept the long war paradigm vis-a-vis current conflicts, but an even bigger problem is that our national planners are anticipating future wars of the same nature. Even usually lucid Senators Joseph Biden and Richard Lugar of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee say we need "a new national security act," that gives the U.S. a diplomatic and civil administrative strike force capacity, ready to move into "Iraq-type conflicts as the military is to cope with hostile forces" (Foreign Policy's Best Hope.)

The U.S. must focus on the welfare and survivability of our nation before spending irreplaceable deficit dollars on pipe dreams.

Viewed another way, don't invasions and forced regime changes mean we hate them and want to take away their freedoms and change their way of life? U.S. policy does to them what Bush says they want to do to us. "I know you are, but what am I?" Does this make adult sense?

Such a sham; such a shame. Our combat might enable elections in theatre, but without any meaningful democratic features. Theirs is a government of flunkies, minus country or national consensus or identity. Maybe that is why our confederacy of dunces declare all is going well -- it is a case of narcissistic identification.

Our armies are fomenting hatred and embitterment that cannot be quelled with palletized greenbacks or ballot box props.