The Convergence
By
Danny Schechter
Financial Crisis and Impending War Are Converging as failed policies become self-fulfilling prophecies, argues News Dissector Danny Schechter
New York, New York: It looks like two great events may be converging.
First, the announced, then put off, and, now, increasingly back on US punitive bombing of Syria which seems to be timed around the anniversary of 9/11, just so we don't lose our anger at the terrorist "bad guys" who, so it seems, are on our side for this great military salute to international law by breaking it.
And,
then, there's the anniversary of the financial crisis which all the military
bang-bang is sure to drive off the front pages even as NY Times economist Paul
Krugman noted Friday: "In a few days, we'll reach the fifth anniversary of the
fall of Lehman Brothers -- the moment when a recession, which was bad enough,
turned into something much scarier. Suddenly, we were looking at the real
possibility of economic catastrophe.
And
the catastrophe came."
President
Obama has demanded TV airtime for Tuesday, the day after the Congress is
supposed to vote on Syria (although he earlier said he would not be required to
respect any vote.) For two weekends now, pro-war arguments have dominated all five Sunday morning TV interview programs.
Currently
calls to Congressional offices are reportedly running 540-1 against this war,
but what the American people want does not seem to register with teeny alliance
between the US, France and Israel--and not
the rest of the world--determined to teach Assad a lesson no matter who likes
it. The latest number I saw showed a
majority of Americans still oppose a military strike.
Here's
the only positive news I found in the NY Times: "Each morning for the
last week, at 7:45, more than a dozen White House aides have mustered in the
corner office of President Obama's chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, to get
their marching orders for what has become the most intense, uphill lobbying
campaign of the Obama presidency.
The White House's goal is to persuade Congress to
authorize a limited military strike against Syria to punish it for a deadly
chemical weapons attack. But after a frenetic week of wall-to-wall intelligence
briefings, dozens of phone calls and hours of hearings with senior members of
Mr. Obama's war council, more and more lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, are
lining up to vote against the president."
You
can be sure that Obama does not intend to speak about the economic crisis next
Tuesday, because he has no real answer to Krugman's indictment of failed
economic policies. One of the architects of that policy, Larry Summers is
apparently about to be appointed to head the Federal Reserve Bank for TEN
years, despite his pathetic record, with Obama's support.
Of
the financial situation, Krugman wrote: "Reasonable measures of the "output
gap" over the past five years -- the difference between the value of goods and
services America could and should have produced and what it actually produced --
run well over $2 trillion. That's trillions of dollars of pure waste, which we
will never get back.
Behind that financial waste lays an even more tragic waste of human potential. Before the financial crisis, 63 percent of adult Americans were employed; that number quickly plunged to less than 59 percent , and there it remains."
But
since most people don't understand economics any more that the people in power
who are supposed to, we will ignore that crisis so that we can create another
one by pulverizing Syria--despite appeals from the UN Secretary General, the
Pope, The Arab League, NATO, The British Parliament and anybody with any common
sense who can see that no good can, or will, come of this adventure.
President
Obama's "credibility," if those words can any longer be spoken of in the same
breath, is hardly going to be bolstered by snubbing the wishes of millions of
Americans and people throughout the world, who are scratching their heads and
asking why would he do that? What will we/he gain?
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