When it was us agaisnt the Godless Soviets, we had a legitimate projection of power we could claim and use to either bribe or coerce the rest of the world, lest they face the threat of Soviet hegemony.
But that died with the USSR.
With the new 'war' on terror, we simply don't have tfat same level of influence or leverage. It is a different kind of threat, mainly in the fact that it's localized. When Britain was attacked by terrorists, they were attacked by terrorists already in their country. When Spain was bombed, it was by terrorists that were already in Spain. It's an internal threat. And other countries simply don't have the same need of US force or power with an internal threat that can't be countered with nukes and bombs.
Regardless of politics, I can't see how any inteligent person can be blind to the clear illustrations in Iraq of the limits of an all volunteer army to wage a protracted, full scale war and occupation. A very important part of that limitation is, of course, the are we're in and the people we invaded and occupied, but there are clear indications of our limits in logistics and support regardless of the location of the operation.
Private contractors in a war zone is just stupid on a purely military level, and yet our forces couldn't support themselves ifthey had to. Now it's to the point that the private contractors are luring away our best, most seasoned troops with much, much higher pay. If I'm gonna be in a war zone regardless, you're damn skippy I'd rather get paid better for it.
The Iraqi military was a joke. Saddam was a paper tiger. He was easily the weakest and seemingly easiest target in the Middle East tha twe could somehow justify attacking, and the thing has been one arrogant miscalculation after the other. And now it's costing us our military.
Which leads us to my point of our true owrlkd influence in the post Cold War, 'war' on terrorism environment; our economy.
Not long ago, some knob of a administration official publicly and with a perfectly straight face claimed somehwat increduously that Amnerica was simply being a good world citizen by racking up massive debt so as to fuel the worlds economy. By going into debt, we were lifting others out of poverty and improving the lives of all those people getting our outsourced jobs. My, but it was glorious.
The complete idiocy of this claim aside, we do fuel the worlds economy. Sadly, our addiction to cheap crap will prevent us from wielding this influence to our favor. Bush should have gotten on Chinas ass long ago for pegging the yuan to the dollar. It's killing us. Bush knows it, or at least his advisors know it, everyone knows it, yet he does nothing.
We want Jordon to do something for us? Fine, ban Wal-Mart from buying any clothes made there. Same with Yemen, and the UAE, where massive factories pay poverty wages to grind out clothes for Wal-Mart. There's a factory in Jordan that employes thousands that make nothing but shirts for Wal-Mart. Damn skippy they be kissing our ass if we shut that down. But then we'd have to *gasp* pay slightly more for shirts.
We used to make everything we needed in the US. 50 years ago there was not one major or minor consumer appliance or product that was not made in America. All our clothes, all our food, all our cars, all our electronics, all our appliances, every single thing we purhcased was either made here or there was a domesticaly produced equivalent available.
But capitalism knows no borders, it's not bound by nationality. It by design falls to the lowest common denominator, and thus the rise, once logistics allowed it, of the national box stores. The closes thing previously to them was maybe Sears or Montgomery Wards, who largely at their peak did more catalogue sales than retial.
Our economy is false, our wealth is hollow, it's a sham, a facade. I can get a free cell phone with a three year contract that they'll give to anyone regardless of credit history and I can buy a 20" TV at Wal-Mart for less than $90, but I can't afford health insurance or a retirement fund. I can buy a DVD player for $30, but I buy cheap high fat and sodium food because it's more affordable.
Where is the trade off? Which is more important, continued access to cheap crap from China or better health and more productive living?
A free market is a lie. We do not have a free market. Even the Republicans have shit loads of regulations and laws and fees and subsidies. If we had any true semblance of a free market then we wouldn't have any farm subsidies. For Gods sake, we still have a wool subsidiy left over from WW II! Why?
So lets not even pretend we have a free market, we don't. And once past that, we can talk about how to wield our economy in the post Cold War times. But it would take some sacrifice at home, and I just don't think we have it in us anymore. Bush didn't even ask us to sacrifice after the Spet. 11th attacks. He not only didn't ask us to sacrifice, he paid us off with multiuple tax cuts during major war time and told us to go fucking shopping or see a movie. Don't let the terrorists win by changing your daily routine, but in the meantime I'm going to rewrite the Constitution in my vice presidents image.
If we couldn't even sacrifice for Sept. 11th, how will we ever sacrifice cheap crap? The bad side of captialsim, and why it utterly and totaly fails as social policy, is that in the end it lowers itself to the lowest common denominator. Beta-Max kicked the crap out of VHS inquality, but VHS was cheaper and "good enough." Windows sucked compared to Mac, but it was cheaper and good enough.
The media, the market, industry, even politics all lower themselves to the lowest common denominator at some point in time, and all because of the one commonality between them all; the need to make money. They all have to go for the biggest return on thesmallest investment. And that's the fallacy of captialism as social policy, and that's why we'll never truly use our economic influence to it's fullest advantage.
The world needs us more than we need them, if we have to, we can make anything we need here. It'll just be more expensive. But hey, that might be one way to get back some manufacturing jobs, no? Nah, who wants higher prices, am I right?
