I have nothing to say that this guy doesn't say better: sorry so derivative. Mille the bug is very cute, for the record.
Things to Come
By PAUL KRUGMAN


Of course we'll win on the battlefield, probably with ease. I'm not a
military expert, but I can do the numbers: the most recent U.S. military
budget was $400 billion, while Iraq spent only $1.4 billion.

What frightens me is the aftermath — and I'm not just talking about the
problems of postwar occupation. I'm worried about what will happen beyond
Iraq — in the world at large, and here at home.

The members of the Bush team don't seem bothered by the enormous ill will
they have generated in the rest of the world. They seem to believe that
other countries will change their minds once they see cheering Iraqis
welcome our troops, or that our bombs will shock and awe the whole world
(not just the Iraqis) or that what the world thinks doesn't matter. They're
wrong on all counts.

Victory in Iraq won't end the world's distrust of the United States because
the Bush administration has made it clear, over and over again, that it
doesn't play by the rules. Remember: this administration told Europe to take
a hike on global warming, told Russia to take a hike on missile defense,
told developing countries to take a hike on trade in lifesaving
pharmaceuticals, told Mexico to take a hike on immigration, mortally
insulted the Turks and pulled out of the International Criminal Court — all
in just two years.

Nor, as we've just seen, is military power a substitute for trust.
Apparently the Bush administration thought it could bully the U.N. Security
Council into going along with its plans; it learned otherwise. "What can the
Americans do to us?" one African official asked. "Are they going to bomb us?
Invade us?"

Meanwhile, consider this: we need $400 billion a year of foreign investment
to cover our trade deficit, or the dollar will plunge and our surging budget
deficit will become much harder to finance — and there are already signs
that the flow of foreign investment is drying up, just when it seems that
America may be about to fight a whole series of wars.

It's a matter of public record that this war with Iraq is largely the
brainchild of a group of neoconservative intellectuals, who view it as a
pilot project. In August a British official close to the Bush team told
Newsweek: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran."
In February 2003, according to Ha'aretz, an Israeli newspaper, Under
Secretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating
Iraq the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria and North Korea.

Will Iraq really be the first of many? It seems all too likely — and not
only because the "Bush doctrine" seems to call for a series of wars. Regimes
that have been targeted, or think they may have been targeted, aren't likely
to sit quietly and wait their turn: they're going to arm themselves to the
teeth, and perhaps strike first. People who really know what they are
talking about have the heebie-jeebies over North Korea's nuclear program,
and view war on the Korean peninsula as something that could happen at any
moment. And at the rate things are going, it seems we will fight that war,
or the war with Iran, or both at once, all by ourselves.

What scares me most, however, is the home front. Look at how this war
happened. There is a case for getting tough with Iraq; bear in mind that an
exasperated Clinton administration considered a bombing campaign in 1998.
But it's not a case that the Bush administration ever made. Instead we got
assertions about a nuclear program that turned out to be based on flawed or
faked evidence; we got assertions about a link to Al Qaeda that people
inside the intelligence services regard as nonsense. Yet those serial
embarrassments went almost unreported by our domestic news media. So most
Americans have no idea why the rest of the world doesn't trust the Bush
administration's motives. And once the shooting starts, the already loud
chorus that denounces any criticism as unpatriotic will become deafening.

So now the administration knows that it can make unsubstantiated claims,
without paying a price when those claims prove false, and that saber
rattling gains it votes and silences opposition. Maybe it will honorably
refuse to act on this dangerous knowledge. But I can't help worrying that in
domestic politics, as in foreign policy, this war will turn out to have been
the shape of things to come.


  posted by Cinerina @ 4:12 PM

 
Big news but sad news - Gromit's last night on this earth is tonight. I have been making a gift for Kevin and crying. I wish I could be there. I just needed to say that. My posting problem is apparently not worthy of response from the help team so my posts will be brief and lame as you have come to expect.
For anyone who loved a kitty who was dumb and sweet, lift a glass for the Boy; his pain is ended.

  posted by Cinerina @ 4:20 PM