By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Now that the silly season is over, let’s be really clear where events are headed.
1) Obama is reelected. He never needs your vote ever again. What he does need, to become as rich as Bill Clinton, is people to buy his speeches. If you don’t have 500K or so hanging around to pay for an ex-POTUS speech, you are no longer part of his constituency. Practically speaking, he needs to make sure people in the financial industry have the money and inclination to make him rich once he’s no longer President.
2) Idiot triumphalism aside, the electoral count was deceptive. The Republicans didn’t lose by that much in key electoral states. The Democrats are not cruising for 20 years of control of the Presidency. There will be a Republican president again, that is an existential certainty. The Republicans didn’t want this election very much, and did not really push for it. There are good reasons for that.
3) The Republican party are reactionaries, who want to repeal the 20th century. The Democrats are conservatives. There is no major left wing party in the US. Since avowed left-wingers won’t even vote for third parties in states where Democrats will win for sure, like New York, third parties can be written off for the time being, especially on the left. If there is a third party which will rise, it will be on the right.
4) The Republicans and the Democrats agree on many issues, disagreeing mostly on social issues. Even on social issues, the differences are in the margins. Obama deported more Hispanics than Bush, but is ok with letting college educated young Hispanics stay, which was enough to buy the Hispanic vote, since they came here to build a better future for their children. Obama overruled his drug administration’s scientists to make sure that Plan B did not become an OTC medication, because as a father he would want to know. (Of course, if an underage female needs Plan B, in a lot of cases it will be because her father or other family member raped her.) Obama signed an executive order saying that federal money could not be used for abortion.
5) On civil liberties, as opposed to social issues, there is no real space between the two parties. Obama has increased surveillance, arrogated the right to kill American citizens without a trial, and instituted more cases against whistle blowers than any President in history.
6) Obama wants a Grand Bargain. This will mean some nominal tax increases on the rich, and a pile of cuts to the middle class and the poor, especially the young. SS & Medicare will be cut.
7) Bush tried to cut SS, he failed. Obama will succeed, cutting SS and Medicare is something only a Democrat can do. Moreover he will make Dems vote for it, and the Republicans will only give him enough votes to pass, most of them will vote against it, thus making Republicans the party of SS and Medicare. There will also be massive cuts to the federal bureaucracy and even further cuts to programs like food stamps (which continues to exist only because farmers want it.)
8 ) Obama is, thus, moving to austerity. The economy will be ok till he gets what he wants, then it will crater. Give it two years, after the mid-terms, you’re toast.
9) Americans have decided they want catastrophe. There is NO significant force in US society pushing against having a disaster.
10) The US is trying to become a petro-state through fracking. It won’t help most Americans, and it will do massive environmental damage. It will also accelerate global warming. Yes, Obama is better on global warming than Republicans, but he’s not enough better to matter, he is, in fact, making it worse. Your grandchildren will ritually curse your very names.
11) America will have another major war within 10 years. That’s what empires in decline do. It could be with Saudi Arabia, it could be with China, it could be with someone else. It will happen, because a President will be in a bind, and think “I’ve got this big military, why don’t I use it to solve my problems?”
12) Inequality will continue to increase, with dips during recessions. Wages and wealth of ordinary Americans will continue to drop. There will be a small housing recovery, due to massive Fed intervention, keeping homes off the market and deliberate destruction of homes, but it will not get back to a bubble.
13) The Fiscal Cliff will most likely be averted this time, but it will happen again after the next financial crash. If that one is avoided, it will happen again. At some point, it won’t be averted. The US will have no choice at that point but to move to full war footing. If you don’t get a big war before that point, you will then.
14) The fiscal cliffs won’t be avoided forever because the rich aren’t really going to tax themselves at the necessary rates. If they do that, they don’t get ahead. Every collapse, they have to bailed out by someone else, if they aren’t, they’re destroyed. They know this. The key financial assets they held, at the depth of the crash, before the Fed started accepting them, were worth 10 cents on the dollar at best.
15) Europe is not going to fix its problems until the Euro collapses. There will likely be civil wars, Spain is one obvious place it may happen. Greece is almost certainly going to be taken over by the Golden Dawn, who aren’t even neo-Nazis, but rather the real thing: straight up Nazis. The rich would rather deal with Nazis than with the left. That isn’t going to work out for them, but they don’t realize that.
16) In the 20s the Europeans relied on America to be the engine of growth, that didn’t work out. In the current day, the world is relying on China to be the engine of economic growth, and that isn’t going to work out either.
17) After the fiscal cliff that isn’t managed, and after the big war, the US will have a full fledged economic collapse, on the order of Russia after the USSR collapsed, but worse because most Americans don’t actually own their houses (they have mortgages), don’t have gardens where they can grow food, and don’t have good public transit.
18) History is mutable. This is now the glide path. It is most likely. The details can change, but the endgame is virtually certain. Since no one in the US wants to stop collapse and catastrophe, it will happen.
19) After it happens, the current generation in power will be thrown out on their asses by the young, who will have to fix America. We’ll see if they have what it takes to do it. Expect them to be very cruel to the old, who they will view as having screwed up everything and put the entire bill on them. Among other things, expect an end to so-called intellectual property (a misnomer), expect the financial class to be gutted and expect a radical rewrite of bankruptcy laws.
20) This is an optimistic scenario. The less optimistic (but possibly realistic) scenario has a “charismatic leader” of some variety take over and institute a dictatorship of some variety. Many Americans will be begging for such a figure to arise, feeling that only a strong man can make the country work again.
Jack Welch was wrong that the BLS fixed the job #s. But so what? He was right on the key point: there is no way in HELL that the economy produced 873,000 jobs, as per the Household Survey. Ordinary people know this, and all the pundits who argued about whether the BLS fixed the # missed the point: the number does not reflect people’s experience. If the economy really produced 873K jobs, it’d be the start of a boom. It’s not, and everyone knows it’s not. To ordinary people, that number is a LIE, and it does not matter if it was fixed, or if it is a statistical artifact.
Obama is unpopular. Very unpopular. If Romney wasn’t a horrible candidate, largely because he has to pander to the crazies in the Republican party, he’d be toast. The reason Obama is a lousy candidate is that the economy is trash. In absolute numbers, jobs have not recovered. In relative terms, they aren’t even close. 93% of all gains in the economy have gone to the top 1%.
The US economy, if you are an ordinary person, is trash. It has never recovered. Given Obama’s policies, it will not recover. The same is true of Romney, who is promising an economic apocalypse, but people already know that Obama is a failure. Romney might be worse, but they might decide to take a chance on him anyway, knowing that the status quo is permanent stagnation.
Ordinary people have seen their wealth crash, their wages decline, and the number of jobs available dive. Because the job market is so horrible, bosses are free to treat work like trash, so their jobs are much more unpleasant than they were.
This is a direct result of Obama’s policies. It was predictable, it was predicted. He is responsible for not fixing the economy. That was his job. He failed (too busy bombing weddings and funerals, and making individual decisions about who to assassinate.)
If this is true, the drone shot down by Israel was from Hezbollah.
Drones are cheap. They are just big radio controlled planes. They cost nothing compared to a jet fighter, and the technology is not hard. Islamic Jihad claims they might have one (who knows). Hezbollah is sophisticated, they built their own telecom network, for example, and tapped into Israeli soldiers cell-phones in the last war. They won the e-lint battle in that war.
Drones will spread, they are a poor man’s air force. They suck compared to jets, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, but they are cheap, easy to make and easy to operate. This is only the beginning.
(MFI has up a commentary worth reading, as well.)
The post on jobs #s has been withdrawn for the moment, since I didn’t notice I was using Current Population Survey #s where I should have used Employment survey #s. Ouch. I am officially embarrassed. At least it was only up for a few minutes, though the internet is forever, as we all know.
Anyway, for those who read it, the numbers are approximately correct, the percentage #s are off, and the current population survey showed 873,000 jobs gained last month as opposed to 114K on the employment survey (this is why I don’t use the CPS. Anyone who believes the economy actually added 873K jobs is delusional. That doesn’t mean they’re cooked, but they are a statistical artifact.) I’d recalculate, but it’s 3:36 in the morning and my brain is fried. Some day soon, probably. My apologies.
The tl;dr version is this. 114 thousand is not a good jobs report and to regain all jobs in any time frame short of 10 years to a generation, you need steady reports over 200K, and ideally over 300K. From the employment survey, not the population survey. 😉
Elevated from the comments, MarkFromIreland:
Greetings Ian,
Do you remember Mohammed Ibn Laith?
Gorilla’s Guides » 2007 » February » 15:
I am a Muslim I am Iraki maybe you believe that God told you that must turn aside when you have been struck.That is not what God tells me.
What God tells me is what he tells every other Muslim when you are attacked you defend yourself and you keep on figthing until your attacker is in such pain that they offer truce or surrender. You attack back and you continue attacking relentlessly, never ever giving any respite, until the invader flees worn out with grief and horror and pain. Any sacrifice is warranted to expel the American I feel no grief when I see an American soldier die. I feel only relief that this one less barbarian to kill innocent Iraki children.
And then there’s this from Colonel Iihsan:
Gorilla’s Guides » Blog Archive » It is not only Americans who can say “Mission Accomplished”:
The Resistance’s Tactics Were SuccessfulThis is the lesson of the Iraki Resistance’s war on the American invaders. The goal was not just to inflict death and physical wounds they goal was to drive American troops into mental and moral breakdown.
The tactic was to attack American troops relentlessly — to force the American invaders to live in a situation where they never ever had any respite.
The American invader was never to be able to relax they must be denied any respite, they were denied meaningful rest.
The resistance consciously set out to inflict constant tension,constant sleeplessness, constant mental pain, and constant uncertainty, and fear upon the American invaders. The idea was to do this until a large proportion of the invaders were worn out with fatigue, grief, horror and pain.
The Resistance’s intent was to not just inflict pain and horror on the invading troops for the sake of doing, the object was to shatter their minds so that while they were still in Irak they turned on their comrades. And then after they returned to America that they turned on the American civilian population at large.
This tactic was, one resistance commander told me, far more successful than they had dared hope.
The American high command, and American civilians are only now beginning to appreciate what the resitance did to them. They are only now starting to realise that they are not the only ones who can inflict “collateral damage” and that there is more than one form of it.
It is not just Americans who can say “Mission Accomplished”.
As you no doubt worked out a long time ago the murder of first his grandfather, followed by the murder of his parents, and the murder of his younger brother all by American forces decided Mohammed to join the resistance. He was a very successful commander who ensured that in his sector no Americans ever set foot outside their FOB’s other than in heavily armed convoys. He made sure that PRT leaders went home dead or wounded he made sure that civilian PRT members never ever got to leave their compounds. The Iraki resistance won their war – America ran away from Irak leaving its “enduring bases” and an awful lot of TOE behind them. All of which is a long-winded way of saying you’re right. Napoleon used to talk about “moral force” as a force multiplier which is what you’re discussing above.
Hope you’re well. I very very very rarely comment here (I think this is my third) but I read you regularly.
Keep well.
mfi
Mark,
yes, thanks for the comment. I do remember Mohammed.
I haven’t written about it, but I have discussed with friends, the collateral damage. I’m especially noticing it in police departments. The vets come back, join police departments and the results are ugly. They have no fire discipline, act as if they’re in a war zone, blowing away civilians indiscriminantly if they feel in the least danger (the guy who killed his boss in NY comes to mind) and often when they clearly aren’t (a man running away from them). They also have a taste for brutality, and the only people they have fellow-feeling for are their mates, certainly not anyone who isn’t in their “unit”.
Then, of course, there are the homeless veterans, the suicides, the wife and child beaters, and the rapists.
A lot of these people are VERY badly damaged. Occupation is always brutalizing, for everyone involved, but this bunch has been particularly brutalized. One of my friends is an ex-US military officer, out before Iraq, and to say that he is livid is a vast understatement.
The same thing happened to the Israeli army, over time. And Americans went and copied failed Israeli tactics.
We saw it happening at the time. Not just immoral, and unethical, but a mistake.
But the resistance did not win much of a victory. Brutalizing your brutalizers is all very nice and I have no moral qualms against it. If Canada was invaded, I would fight, and I would join the resistance, and if the invaders were American (and who else could it be) I would rejoice at every dead American soldier.
But at the end of the day, Iraq is in shambles, appears to be essentially a protectorate of Iran, has a huge Kurdish problem (or the Kurds have an Iraqi problem, depending on where you sit), violence is ongoing, and so on.
Iraq was never a war anyone was going to “win”, that’s why people like me were against it from before the beginning. All anyone can claim, at best, is a Pyrrhic victory.
As for America, as I’ve said in the past, the first great man of the 21st century (great is not a synonym for good) was bin Laden. He wanted to draw America onto the ground, and bleed them like the USSR was bled, costing them so much treasure that their economy could no longer bear the costs of empire. He, essentially, succeeded, thanks to the sublime stupidity of his enemies. He must have gotten down on his knees every day and thanked God for George Bush and American high command and the NeoCons. And now the Muslim brotherhood is in charge in Egypt and that is a direct result of food inflation, which is a direct result of the costs and opportunity costs of Bush’s idiot eternal wars, and the mandate that 9/11 game him to be an evil moron.
The far enemy (US) is blowing up its goddamn satraps with its insane financial and economic policies. That strain is exactly what bin Laden wanted, he says so in his writing.
He’s dead, but he’s winning. And I think that’s a deal he would have happily taken if offered to him September 10th, 2001.
The Fed has announced its third quantitative easing program. To state what should be obvious, the effect on the economy for ordinary people will be minimal, as with QE1 and 2. It will help banks, financial firms most, other large corporations will also benefit. If you work at the executive level in one of those organizations, it will help you and raise your salary or bonuses. It will not significantly raise demand for goods and services and will not do much for the rest of the economy. Remember, 93% of the gains of the Obama recovery went to the rich, and that was not by mistake.
There’s been a great deal of crying about the death of an Ambassador and others in an attack on the US embassy in Libya.
Now I’m a strong supporter of the inviolability of embassies but I wonder why other people should be?
Embassy inviolability is part of one of the oldest strata of international law, but it is a part of international law.
International law also says that aggressive war is a war crime. Iraq was an aggressive war, and hundreds of thousands of people died as a result (the # is vague, because the US deliberately chose not to count).
International law requires that prisoners of war have certain rights. If they are judged not be prisoners of war, then prisoners have civilian rights. Note that the captives in Guantanmo have been deliberately denied both sets of protection.
Drone attacks in countries which do not permit them are acts of war. The US engages in these all the time, in countries that they are not at war with. The US gets away with it because those countries know they can’t win a war against the US, so they have to put up with it. Nonetheless, drone attacks are clear violations of international law.
Torture is a violation of international criminal law. Granted, a lot of countries violate this, but you can’t really be a paragon of international law and torture as a matter of policy.
Meanwhile Egypt just had a revolution. It was against a dictator who was supported, strongly, by the US. That dictator engaged in routine torture.
Drone attacks hit funerals regularly, and weddings often enough. This isn’t against international law, but should people whose families have been killed in attacks on weddings and funerals be respectful of the sanctity of embassies? Would you? Really?
If international law doesn’t protect the weak, but only the strong, why would we expect the weak to respect it? Why should non-state actors care what the rules of states are, when states respect those rules only when it is to their advantage?
There will be more embassy attacks over time. Bank on it.
The assassination strategy the US pursues is interesting, not in what it says about the US’s foes, but what it says about the US’s leaders. Al-Qaeda’s “#2” man has been “killed” so often that it’s a running joke, and Taliban leadership is regularly killed by assassination. Bush did this, Obama really, really does this. Probably a lot of them are BS, but it’s probably safe to assume that a lot of leadership is killed.
The Taliban is still kicking the coalition’s ass.
Leadership isn’t as big a deal as people make it out to be, IF you have a vibrant organization people believe in. New people step up, and they’re competent enough. Genius leadership is very rare, and a good organization doesn’t need it, though it’s welcome when it exists. As long as the organization knows what it’s supposed to do (kick Americans out of Afghanistan) and everyone’s motivated to do that, leadership doesn’t need to be especially great, but it will be generally competent, because the people in the organization will make it so.
American leaders are obsessed with leadership because they lead organizations where no one believes in the organization’s goals. Or rather, they lead organizations where everyone knows the leadership doesn’t believe in its ostensible goals. Schools are lead by people who hate teachers and want to privatize schools to make profit. The US is lead by men who don’t believe in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Police are lead by men who think their job is to protect the few and beat down the many, not to protect and serve. Corporations make fancy mission statements and talk about valuing employees and customers, but they just want to make a buck and will fuck anyone, employee or customer, below the c-suite. They don’t have a “mission” (making money is not a mission, it’s a hunger if it’s all you want to do), they are parasites and they know it.
Making organizations work if they’re filled with people who don’t believe in the organization, who believe that the “leadership” is only out for themselves and has no mission beyond helping themselves, not even enriching the employees or shareholders, is actually hard. People don’t get inspired by making the c-suite rich. Bureaucrats, knowing they are despised and distrusted by their political matters, and knowing that they aren’t allowed to do their ostensible job, as with the EPA generally not being allowed to protect the environment, the DOJ not being allowed to prosecute powerful monied crooks and the FDA being the slave of drug companies and the whims of politically connected appointees, are hard to move, hard to motivate, hard to get to do anything but the minimum.
So American leaders, and indeed the leaders of most developed nations think they’re something special. Getting people to do anything, and convincing people to do the wrong thing, when they joined to actually teach, protect the environment, make citizens healthier or actually prosecute crooks is difficult. Being a leader in the West, even though it comes with virtually complete immunity for committing crimes against humanity, violating civil rights, or stealing billions from ordinary citizens, is in many respects a drag. A very very well paying drag, but a drag. Very few people have the necessary flexible morals and ability to motivate employees through coercion required.
So American leaders in specific and Westerners in general think that organizations will fall apart if the very small number of people who can actually lead, stop. But that’s because they think that leading the Taliban, say, is like leading an American company or the American government. They think it requires a soulless prevaricator who takes advantage of and abuses virtually everyone and is still able to get them to, reluctantly, do their jobs.
Functioning organizations aren’t like that. They suck leadership upwards. Virtually everyone is being groomed for leadership and is ready for leadership. They believe in the cause, they know what to do, they’re involved. And they aren’t scared of dying, if they really believe. Oh sure, they’d rather not, but it won’t stop them from stepping up.
So Obama kills and kills and kills and somehow the Taliban is still kicking his ass. Al-Qaeda in whatever country you care to name has its #2 killed every few weeks, and somehow there’s always another one. Because these people believe. There’s always another believer, if it’s a functioning organization, and on it goes.
The declaration of the Haqqani network as terrorists made me laugh. You read about them, and this is what you discover–the founder was a minister in the Taliban government. So, let’s get this straight. His country, which he is a minister in, is invaded, and 10 years later he’s still fighting. And he refuses to negotiate with the US, because hey, he figures he’s winning.
Imagine if the US was invaded, occupied and a puppet government was set up. A cabinet minister escaped, went underground, and set up a resistance network. What would you call him? A terrorist? Sure, if you’re the occupying power. If you’re a citizen? Well, maybe not, eh? Sure he fights nasty, but the nation which kills so many civilians with drones can’t really cast the first stone, can it?
And one day, they’ll probably kill him.
And it won’t make any damn difference.
