With the killing of Osama Bin Laden we have to take a long look at what the real situation in the Middle East has become and what we should be doing about it.
Putting aside all the hysteria, all the finger pointing and all the turf protection that politicians engage in, I think we must accept the historical fact that one hugely successful operation aside, Al Qaeda hasn’t been much of a foe. Between 9/11 and now Al Qaeda hasn’t pulled off a single significant operation. During that decade we have invaded two countries, spent 3 trillion dollars and lost more American soldiers than all the people who died in the twin towers. Why are we still in Iraq and Afghanistan? I understand that we are pulling out of Iraq but all indications are that we will maintain too large a force there into the foreseeable future. As for Afghanistan we no longer have a dog in that fight. There is almost no one in our military or intelligence operations who actually understands the mentality of the average Afghani citizen. We keep thinking it’s a country. They don’t know what a country is. They only have allegiance to their individual tribes.
Yes, the president is pulling a few measly troops out of Afghanistan but it’s a pittance. We don’t have to maintain a military presence in Afghanistan in order to watch Pakistan and we don’t need Pakistan if we no longer have a military presence in Afghanistan. We need to get our troops out of the Middle East and start using the money we’re wasting there, to develop a non-fossil fuel technology that will enable us to drop the entire region and allow it to settle calmly back into the middle ages.
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Self-reliance has been a basic building block of Republican philosophy ever since I was a kid. That’s why they are against welfare and any number of so called socialistic programs the Democrats have set up to help the disadvantaged. So why is it that they are so against the part of the presidents healthcare bill that forces everyone to partake in the system? If you look at the whole structure, the system will only save money if all citizens participate, because it is that blanket participation that keeps the costs down and more important keeps the deadbeats from not paying their fair share. How come the Republicans think its okay for a guy to stay outside the system and use an emergency room, thereby thrusting the much higher treatment cost onto the rest of us? The responsible thing is for each individual to join the system and lift his fair share of the weight. That’s supposed to be the Republican way, isn’t it? Are we really sitting on some dead-beat’s freedom by forcing him to participate in a system that benefits all? Of course the solution is to do it the Republican way, that is, prohibit all hospitals from treating anyone unless they can pay out front or have health insurance. That would work until some redneck showed up with five runny nosed kids and a hand back in the tractor gears.
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Every time I hear some brain dead clown carrying on about how TARP and Stimulus didn’t work or how the government is nationalizing the banks, Wall street, General motors, Ford or Chrysler I want to stop them from collecting any more unemployment insurance. Then again maybe they are not dumb, maybe they are just doing the current Republican thing. Maybe they are just lying. Without TARP and the Stimulus this country would now be in the grip of a second great depression instead of just a large recession.
The cause of the recession is most often attributed to the failure of the banks and Wall Street to act honestly and intelligently with regard to the mortgage crises and that is indeed part of the problem but a part that is just as big and that is still killing us is the inability of small business to get the credit they need for startup and to pay everyday bills.
In 2008 after Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns folded, Henry Paulson realized that any more banks going out of business could start a run on all the banks that none of them would be able to survive. He forced the ten top banking companies to take $125B so they would have cash on hand for runs and to lend out. Unfortunately Paulson didn’t force them to sign a written agreement that they would have to lend out a certain percentage of that money.
Not satisfied with the fact that they had, through their greed and stupidity, almost bankrupted the nation the banks held onto the money and still didn’t lend, thereby further hurting the economy and slowing down Obama’s ability to force down unemployment. No money lent, no new business, no more jobs. But still the Republican’s who are the banks and Wall Street claim that the continuing recession is Obama’s fault.
The Stimulus, which the Republicans claimed was socializing American industry actually kept the big three of the auto industry open and saved hundreds of thousands of jobs. Without it both GM and Chrysler would have filed for bankruptcy and the American auto industry would have been in a shambles. As it is, all of the big three are prospering, many jobs have been saved and GM is hiring more workers. The rest of the Stimulus money went to extending unemployment benefits for those who had run out. Still the Republicans scream failure. If this is a failure, what is their definition of success?
There was never enough money in the Stimulus bill to attack creating jobs through infrastructure and that was because the Republicans in congress blocked further spending. If they had not we might now be on our way to an improved infrastructure and have already employed many thousands of those who are out of work but that’s just the Right voting wrong.
Without TARP and the Stimulus, banks would be closed, the auto industry would be in a shambles and we would have breadlines in the streets. The Right understands this but they just can’t face up to it. They just can’t accept that without these products, both of which run in the face of everything they believe in, we would be a much in much worse shape. But not accepting something is quite different than lying about it, which is just what the Republicans are doing now, in a desperate attempt to salvage some hope of retaining their congressional gains in 2012. From the looks of the District #26 election in upstate New York last week it isn’t going to work.