Topic: Economics
The War on Terror is OVER! We lost...by Jahfre Fire Eater
(libertarian)
Thursday, February 5, 2009
....if, that is, you agree with this assessment of the situation from Bill Bonner at The Daily Reckoning.
In the annotated excerpt below, the highlighting is mine.
(JFE is me Jahfre Fire Eater)
====================================The Washington Postreports that the War on Terror is over. No armistice has been announced. No treaty has been signed. The whole thing is just being dropped quietly, like a burnt-out cigarette. Too bad. It was our favorite war.
In the few words that follow, we explain why. First, the background:
"The history of the world is but the biography of great men," was Thomas Carlyle's contribution to the genre. But here we are more of the 'cometh the hour, cometh the man' school of history. (me too! - JFE) When something needs doing...there is always some clown dim enough to do it. Osama bin Laden was that man. (So was George Bush, Bill Clinton, George Bush's son and now Barack Obama is the one dim enough to do what will be done. History already wrote it all down for him and he isn't planning to change a word before he repeats it. - JFE)
"Bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy," was what he was up to, he said in a videotape. He even did the math. "Every dollar spent by al-Qaida in attacking the US has cost Washington $1m (£545,000) in economic fallout and military spending," said the report. (My guess is they underestimated by a lot...thus the swift results. It took them way longer to liquidate Russia's assets in Afghanistan while Russia was both closer geographically and closer to crumbling at the onset of the plan. - JFE)
"We, alongside the mujahideen, bled Russia for 10 years, [in Afghanistan] until it went bankrupt... So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy."
How many generations will still tell of bin Laden's triumph? (How many? ALL of them! He makes David and Goliath sound like a children's story. - JFE) He brought down not just one empire, but two. His band of terrorists leeched the Soviets so thoroughly, they fainted. It was no coincidence that the Soviets lost Afghanistan in the same year their empire disintegrated. Then, he delivered a challenge to the America's amour propre.
The attack on the World Trade Center incited a death wish. (Specifically, that death wish was summed up in the implied clause of the war on terror...I call that the AT ANY COST clause. The cost, apparently,was our nation. Seems a bit steep.... - JFE) The feds flashed a Red Alert; Americans cowered in their houses and sealed their windows and doors against biological attack. The 9/11 attackers could have been pursued by the usual gendarmes at negligible cost. Instead, in the general panic, the Bush administration decided to go all out. Thus it was that the greatest stimulus package since WWII began in haste and in delusion.
=====================================
Fire Eater's closing remarks:
These actions have cheaply, easily and swiftly acheived Bin Laden's goals...just as he knew they would. How he must laugh at our continued efforts even during the death throes of our recently "great nation". We are past the point of return. The only people in the entire world who do not know this are those American citizens who deliberately choose NOT to know. Like the labeling on a food package, the information is fully available in plain sight. If people choose not to see it or make use of it, that can't be helped...but, you know what? So far that's working to stave off the inevitable. The main thing keeping other countries from tossing us an anchor is the doubt caused by the staunch and pervasive denial of the looming catastrophe on the part of the American people. Every job lost erodes that prop. (Nancy Pelosi thinks this problem is MUCH worse than reality, she said 500 MILLION Americans are losing their jobs every month. I wonder if she has seen this video: The Units Really DO matter...or if she really believes we are importing 200 million people just so we can fire them...since the population of the USA is only @300 Million total. I assume this was a slip of the tongue but -- saying something so absurd should at least register in a Congress member's mind, shouldn't it?)
So, we're really losing half a million jobs per month, not half a Billion. UM...that isn't BETTER. Losing half a Billion jobs isn't possible so that doesn't affect anyone. Losing half a million jobs per month at an accelerating rate is not a good sign that recovery is near. The denial, that last prop, should be gone by Labor Day at this rate. A year ago I would have guessed it would take 3-5 years for things to get that bad. Now I'm hoping that my Labor Day guess isn't too optimistic to be helpful. What will be will be.
-Jahfre Fire Eater
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Way to go Nostradamus. You have done it and predicted the collapse of the US. Using the Mayan calender are we?
Particularily shortsighted is this nugget," ...the 9/11 attackers could have been pursued by the usual gendarmes at negligible cost."
Yeah Mon...because that worked so well in the past. We could arrest those twicky Islamists and put them on trial. AND then we can drop the charges.
So what are you and the rest of the self justified gonna do when the nation falls apart. Do you even know the names of your neighbors so that you can help or have you bought your cave in Montanna and snickered at the rest of the "sheeple".
You know, we Libertarians thump our chests and laugh at the great unwashed thinking we are being superior. But the sheeple, as you and others snidely call them, are actually people. Labeling them as less than Americans and less than people is as bad as when the statists and liberals measure human life in "units".
I apologize that my note is a bit snarky, but puhlease...we need to get over ourselves and start being people of the community and not a community of writers that are self-justified.
Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: 2009-02-20 07:59:00
Hi Vox Populi sometimes,
Gee, if you are going to say something don't turn around and apologize for it. Say what you believe and stand by it or don't bother.
If you are a snark, be a snark proudly. Your behavior is of no relevance to me so just be yourself.
One of my interests in life is noting how people react to having facts they choose to ignore high lighted in a way it is impossible for them to be ignored. It does tend to draw snarks, no doubt. You might say I'm trolling for them because they amuse me so. But that isn't my intent, just a bonus consequence. (as opposed to the widely referenced unintended consequence.)
Nostradamus wrote cryptic verse that no one in his time could understand. Conspiracy aficionados and coincidence mongers have been assigning their own interpretations to his nonsense for centuries.
I write about the blatantly obvious that anyone can see and understand once their dependence on populist illusion is abandoned.
The Nolan Chart quiz has labeled me "libertarian" I do not defend or proclaim that label on my own initiative. No matter what group you or others may think you are referencing, when the word "we" is used in the herd-sense, be 100% assured I am NOT included in your concept of "we". You go be whatever community spins your wheels; your notion of community and group-think holds no value for me. In fact, I see that mentality as a BIG part of why my quatrains are not cryptic but instead are blatantly obvious; that mentality is also a BIG part of why I delight in ridiculing Libertarians who espouse it.
Your snarkiness says volumes about you and ... absolutely nothing about me. Why should I care how you choose to express yourself? I haven't ever found a compelling answer to that question; especially regarding anonymous internet characters who think their bovine feelings should cause me to change my behavior to be more herd-like.
Thank you for providing an opportunity to make this clear.
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