Shock and Awe

Baghdad, March 19, 2003

On March 19, 2003 – a mere seven years ago – the United States commenced a blitz-krieg war against Iraq, following a year-long propaganda campaign conducted by the Bush administration both in the US and globally, asserting that Iraq had some hand in the 9/11 attacks on America, and that Saddam Hussein’s regime harbored “weapons of mass destruction” and was a direct and immediate threat to the United States.  In the following Constitutionally undeclared “war” some 200,000 to 1 million Iraqi’s were killed or injured, several million were forced into exile; 5,000 US troops were killed.  In this state of alleged extreme national threat the Bush administration cut taxes (primarily for the very wealthy) and did not institute a draft.  Rather it encouraged the populace to “keep shopping.”  In consequence the Bush administration, ostensibly a “conservative” one concerned about government spending, expanded America’s deficit, cut social services, abandoned the maintenance of national infrastructures, did not monitor Wall Street, and produced, belatedly, in consequence true shock and awe on a domestic level:  the economy collapsed.

In March 2010, the stock market climbed back to the 10,800 courtesy of trillions of dollars thrown at the very banking parties which played a major role in engineering those things which caused the collapse.  Officially American unemployment nationally stands at about 10%, though the real figures are more than double that.  Foreclosure rates on housing remains high, and second wave is about due owing to a cycle of “junk bonds” coming up for payment by already stressed banks.  Meantime the Republicans spent the last months in an hysteric but failed attempt to block any kind of health-care reform.  The bill was passed on March 21 and signed into law by the President on March 23.  Owing to Republican intransigence, the bill is a much modified mess, but still provides wide protections to most Americans, and brings 40 million health-care which was previously absent.

Republicans promptly indicated that they will contest this new bill, with legal suits and other tactics intended to slow down its implementation, likely to end before the Supreme Court, the rulings of which at late indicate a sharp Right-wing tilt.   Senator McCain announced that for the rest of the year Obama could expect “no cooperation” – as if there had been any previously.

Thus,  7 years after George Bush’s war of choice, the USA, rather than striding over the world as its singular Superpower,  as planned by his Neo-con cabal, instead limps along on a cylinder or two, struggling to stay a step ahead of a larger overall collapse.   Much of this situation is directly traceable to Republican policies of cutting taxes for the richest, allowing the deficit to balloon, declining to regulate obvious market abuses, and a general tendency of engaging in and encouraging corruption on a massive scale.  Not to mention dragging the nation into an utterly unnecessary and very costly war.   But, they assert they are the national security party.  In their 8 years at the helm these things happened:

At the conclusion of George Walker Bush’s term in office the United States was mired in two wars, for which no tax hike had been called for, the national surplus which he had entered office with had been converted to a large deficit, and the economy as he left office was in a free-fall collapse owing to the policies which his administration had promoted and practiced.   America’s reputation abroad was in tatters owing to Bush’s use of  “extreme rendition,” the officially sanctioned use of torture, the “unitary executive” policy of denying habeas corpus and the establishment of extra-legal prison camps in Guantanamo, Bagram and other sites.  Domestically police-state practices were emplaced and used to silence critics.    This is but a limited listing of the practices and policies which produced the situation with which the nation is confronted today.

White phosphorous over Fallujah

SHOCK AND AWE