Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Anthony
Really good post. What your saying is The United States takes sides with whoever seems to fit their interests at the time like Ruwanda, Somolia...
|
Actually, that's not at all what I am saying, but close.
Iraq is just a textbook case study of our democratic system gone wrong. While it may be the US, most of the G7 faces the same problem in the future if change is not affected. Unfrotunately for the average American citizen, the shit is hitting the fan in a big way, and they're on the wrong side of the fan.
Due to the US's economic power, the US is the democracy in the modern world which has advanced its course the most quickly.
In the United States, the division between the rich and poor has been steadily widening ever since the Reagan Administration. Clinton's administration didnt really reverse the change either, so this isnt a Republican problem only.
When you get a high density of wealth in the hands of a small group with their own interests, and very low wealth density in the hands of the majority of the electorate, you get a system that does not work. President Eisenhower warned long ago that extremely large and powerful businesses and corporations could destroy democracy, and what we are seeing with Iraq, Afghanistan, and basically the entire terrorist problem is the surfacing of exactly that.
The American policial system is dominated by one thing. Money. Constantly in the news about the US election (and to a lesser extend, Canadian politics as well) is the amount of money that has been amassed by the participating political parties. This money is used for advertising, influence peddling by donors, and doesnt even come close to the amount of soft money and influence being peddled by strong supporters (who support political ideologies because they will profit from them). A perfect example of soft money and influence is the American media - they profit bigtime from war. Advertising revenues go sky high because Americans are sitting down every night watching the news in fear of having a friend or relative being killed in the conflict. Viewership of television was at an all-time record high on September 11. And viewership translates into dollars for that industry.
If you take that to the Iraq conflict now, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, AT&T, all these major US players pay big taxes and make huge political contributions, and Iraq is a great opportunity for them to dominate a market with little competition for decades to come by being installed as the incumbents.
Bremner was basically appointed by Karl Rove to keep these special interests happy.
Whats going on in Iraq is basically the same thing going on in the US although less "politically correct". Huge business interests dominating the government, not giving a shit what the people think, and with an opportunity to write the constitution, you're getting one hell of a glimpse of where the US and G7 political systems are really heading.
Corporate government creates terrorism and fuels the anger created by injustice and a government that does not serve the people. It does serve business special interests very well, however.
Take a look at the US record alone. This doesnt even include other G7 nations own involvement in geopolitik meddling:
---
Haiti is a haven for large shipping companies and provides cheap labour. The US allowed UN war criminals to take over and oust a democratically elected government there. Expect some pissed off Haitians to start hitting the US now, since the minimum wage raise was repealed and they're basically back to square zero as a people.
Equador has significant oil reserves. The populous in Equador is already making geurilla style strikes on US oil company interests because they feel screwed by the current government - the US assisted the same guerillas who recently took over Haiti in the overthrowing of the Equadorian government.
Pakistan is full of Islamic extremists who hate America. Preseident Musharref was supported by the US even though the people hate him because he overthrew an elected governmnet in a military coup.
Afghanistan was full of extremists who were trained by CIA operatives in subversive tactics to fight against the Soviets during the Afghanistan war. The US pulled the plug and abandoned the country, realizing that since the Soviets pulled back and protected Turkestan's oil reserves the Afghani insurgents and black-ops operatives would not be able to encroach on the USSR border and build a pipeline from lower Turkestan through Afghanistan and Pakistan so oil could be shipped.
Saudi Arabia, lest we forget, is basically all of the 9/11 hijackers nationality. The brutal Saudi royal family has been profiting heavily from the sale of oil and their relationship with the US, but has neglected to spend much of the proceeds on their own people. While the division between rich and poor in that country grew, and the people were held in check from overthrowing the royal family because of US protection, hatred for America raged in the hearts and minds of most.
In Iran, the US backed the Shah dictatorship's rise to power in order to gain access to oil reserves and for cold war reasons. The dictatorship was brutal. There was a popular uprising which led to the current Islamic regime, which is better than the previous for the average person. Iran is now on the Axis of Evil, and has been accused of supporting terroism. More likely, the average Iranian just hates America because of what the Shah did with US dollars.
Iraq has two stories. First the US backed Saddam Hussein becuse of their failed experiment in Iran, and funded the Iran-Iraq war for cold war concerns. Saddam overthew an elected government in Iraq much the same way as the US backed Shah in Iran. The brutal regime prevailed, with a dismal record of human rights. Then during the Gulf 1991 war, the US encouraged the Shi'ites to uprise against Saddam promising to take Saddam out, then when Kuwait was liberated and protected (they have a TON of oil), they changed their mind and backed out. Thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites were killed by Saddam. Ironically, Sadr's father that the US are tearing down pictures of, was the guy who answered the US call to uprise against Saddam, and was killed. Now, more of the same. The US backed CPA has little concern for the average people, and disparity fo wealth has grown to extremes. The enviroment on the ground in Iraq is a perfect breeding ground for terrorists - a little educated, impoverished, majority of young people who feel they have no control over the political process. And the US is once again the backer.
Even new balkan states of the old USSR the US created as somewhat of a terrorist breeding ground. After the US finally won the cold war using the CIA, you had huge amount of anti-governmnet insurgents trained and funded by the CIA, now cut off and with the USSR busted up, looking for something to do else be labelled as "no longer required". Many of them were Islamic radicals found through the Afghanistan war. The US-brokered "democratization" of Russia left about 90% of Russia's wealth and natural resources in the hands of 8 oligarchs (most of them previously KGB double-agents or CIA operatives), who are all now multi-billionaires. Vladmir Putin's current mission is to clean it up and redistribute the wealth in a more fair way. These people are still fighting against Russia, even though the policial system has changed.
Israel is a somewhat different beast. There are a lot of very rich Jews in the United States, and they form a very powerful lobby group. The Jewish are very organized and very well educated, and very well funded. For a politician to turn their back on this special interest group is suicide, so staunch support for Israel is the order of the day. Israel is very agressively against the Palestinian cause, and fought a war with Egypt over it. This shit is in the news every day, with the security fence and west Jerusalem being the most recent. But this push against the Palistinians has been going on every day for the past two decades, which creates another breeding ground for terrorists.
---
The special interests deeply rooted in the US government have influenced all of these actions, little by little over time, for self interest. Whether these are the oil companies, the military contractors. US foreign policy since the Reagan Administration has been somewhat of a corporate free for all on nations which have not already been saturated with US products.
For countries to survive under our current economic system, the GDP has to grow. For GDP to grow, more stuff has to be sold. American citizens already have their cellphones, microwaves, cars, computers, VCRs, DVDs, and dont need any more of them. For more stuff to be sold, more markets need to be opened up. Rising oil prices have a negative impact on GDP (gross domestic product, which is a calculation of the value of all business transactions by a country's businesses).
It's not the politicians themselves, it's the political reality of the world in which they operate. It's not the US Democrats or the US Republicans; it's the whole US system of government.
Corporate government is basically profit at the expense of the people. The corporate interests have gotten away with their strategies for quite some time because they have largely done things through subversive methods out of the US public's eye in far away backwards countries that US citizens couldnt really give a shit about.
What you have now is blowback to the extreme; these two decades of US Foreign policy directed by corporate and powerful special interest groups has created such a large number of people who feel so injusticed by the US for varying reasons that they feel the need to lash out.
And what is the most sad is that most Americans not only dont even know where their tax dollars have been going for the last 20 years, but they dont even really care. The Americans as a people had better wake up and take a hard critical look at their place in the world, or the radicals will no longer be considered radical, because there will be so many people who hate the Americans that terrorism will be unstoppable until the US, or the world, is destroyed.
_1281048336.jpg)
