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circular by michaelpayne
As the legendary cartoon character Pogo once said, "We
have met the enemy and he is us." America apparently has masochistic tendencies,
i.e., the process of turning one's destructive
tendencies inward or upon oneself. The actions being taken by our government,
coupled with the inactions of the American people to challenge them, are taking
this nation down a dark and dangerous road. We are, in effect, becoming our own
worst enemy.
America can be likened to a great athlete who is fast, powerful,
perfectly conditioned with an unlimited potential. His future greatness is
assured. This athlete is given mega-million dollar contracts, he has fans
everywhere and a fabulous lifestyle; he has everything, not a worry in the
world but then things start to change.
He reduces his conditioning regimen, he
likes the night life, the girls, fast cars and gambling; he drinks too much,
gets involved with the wrong crowd and enters the drug scene. He begins to
perform badly, he skips, or is late, to practices, and he gets benched;
eventually, the team cuts him. He no longer can perform, no one will sign him;
he is done. He has ruined a fantastic opportunity and has, by his own actions, has
self-destructed.
That athlete and America have a
lot in common. This once was a very strong nation, rich in natural resources, a
thriving, growing economy, a solid manufacturing sector and a population in
which creativity and innovation flourished; a country on the rise with the wind
at its back, with great and unlimited potential, and no peers on this planet. It
led the world in math, science, education; we sent a man to the moon and
explored space. All signs pointed upward.
Those days are now over, for America is no
more than a shadow of its former self. This is still a very young country as
compared to other nations of the world. We are still the most powerful nation
in the world, but only military. We still have the largest economy in the
world, though it is currently in a critical state, beginning to unravel.
America no longer leads the world, we are no longer on the rise and,
in fact, we are rapidly regressing. We have arrived at this low point in our
history, not because of the acts of other nations, but simply because we seem to
have lost those attributes and skills that once made this a great nation. We
used to be proactive, now we are reactive. We used to be creative and innovative;
we are now unable to figure out how to create jobs for the multi-millions of
Americans collecting unemployment. And, during all this turmoil, the profits of
corporations and Wall Street are soaring.
Respected economists understand that an
economy thrives and grows when it has a stable, work force that spends its
earnings to purchase of products; that's what should happen in a healthy economy.
That proven theory has been thrown out the window by the profiteers that
replaced long term thinking with the lust for short term profits. The result is
that the fat cats on Wall Street and at the highest levels of corporations are
doing famously while millions of Americans are trying to find some way just to
survive.
Our government is spending hundreds of
billions of dollars that we don't have and, as a result, our national debt is
nearing $14 trillion. But the leaders in the White House and Congress say, "Not
to worry, we can simply pass this debt into the future, and our children and
grandchildren will take care of it; trust us, they'll find a way." What a bunch
of spineless incompetents.
Where has the wealth of America gone,
what did we do with the money that is necessary to support the foundations of
our nation? That's easy to answer. The fact is that 53% of every taxpayer
dollar goes to the Pentagon budget, the CIA, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, veterans'
benefits and healthcare; in other words to the military war machine. That's not
how a nation remains an economic power; that's a toxic recipe for economic
collapse.
President Obama, the 2009 Nobel Peace
Prize winner (a historical travesty), doesn't know the first thing
about creating jobs for American workers but he is becoming a master at the art
of employing America's young to pursue resource wars in Central Asia. Positive domestic
needs such as jobs, infrastructure and education are not being addressed, but
the negatives, such as senseless foreign wars, continue to be his primary areas
of concentration.
America , the European nations, and other allies are tied together in
the military organization called NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
This military alliance was formed in 1949 and based upon the North Atlantic
Treaty which was designed to protect member nations from attacks by belligerent
nations, specifically Russia.
That alliance still has Russia
in its sights but its reach has greatly expanded into other areas with its
current concentration being in Central Asia, specifically in Afghanistan.
NATO's objectives have dramatically
changed over the years and here's why. The U.S. and its European partners have
one common connection. It's the growing need for energy, primarily from
petroleum and natural gas. Who are the "haves" and who are the "have- nots?"
Well the NATO partners are clearly the have-nots while the haves are Russia, various nations in Central Asia and the Middle East.
It now becomes clear that NATO has been
transformed from a defensive alliance into an offensive war machine whose
objective is to fight resource wars. Now do we see why the U.S. and NATO are in Afghanistan
and pushing into Pakistan?
Does anyone actually think that they are there to guarantee the safety of
Americans, to spread democracy, to protect women's rights and to leave just as
soon as the Afghan people can take care of their own security?
Those nations have the oil and gas that
the U.S. and Europe need and the NATO partners control it. Not by
using diplomacy, negotiations and contracts such as China is doing all over the world,
but by using aggressive military force. It might not be the right and honorable
way to go about it, and it may be extremely costly, but that is the direction
that has been chosen.
A meeting of NATO representatives has
just been concluded in Lisbon,
Portugal. It was
decided that NATO forces will be withdrawn from Afghanistan beginning in 2014 when security
operations will be shifted to Afghan forces. That's no more than a smoke
screen. The Afghan forces, many of which are closely connected to the Taliban,
may pretend they share NATO's objectives but that's quite problematic. It's a
good bet that the U.S. and
NATO will remain in this deepening quagmire for many, many years in their quest
to control the resources of Central Asia.
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