Examining The New Approach To Fighting Invisible Wars In A Time Of Crisis
April 19th 2009 12:40
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.”
~ Abraham Lincoln
~ Abraham Lincoln
In a time where millions are lacing the streets of America without a home or a job, the threat of piracy has reached American interests in foreign seas, our War on Drugs has manifested itself into murderous chaos south of our border and the banking industry is still being handed the same tools to continue getting money for doing bad business; it’s hard to believe that we’ve only reached the eye of the storm.
The world wide storm that began with a crisis in credit and has stretched to all seven continents spawning famine, greed and strife to an already unstable world has only begun.
It has been said by the Secretary Of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that in order to fix the problem we must attack it at its source. The source being poverty and how it emboldens the weak to follow leaders bent on greed and murder.
One problem with this philosophy is that our American leadership isn’t ready to attack the true source of the problem, nor will they be ready to do so in the foreseeable future.
One might say that getting food and resources to those in peril would be a way to lessen the problem, but as history has taught us with our last endeavor in Somalia, these efforts of kindness will only be met with hording of aid by those who have the power.
The focus should be on how our practices of creating and deconstructing invisible wars only inflame the issue instead of fixing the problem. For every group of pirates or renegade drug smugglers we take out Rambo-style, there will be another ready to take over four more ships or generate new routes in times of desperation.
On the flip side of the coin, continuing to treat these issues the same way we have treated the Wars, formerly known as the War On Terror and The War On Drugs, will also do nothing but cause more depravity among the populous in these regions resulting in even more anti-American sentiment and future brazen, ruthless attacks.
These are the times of desperation when criminals are returning back to their fundamental roots of clawing their way for survival and the American flag is no longer as intimidating as it once was.
The only way to tackle these issues is by honestly looking into better ways of living as a world society.
When it comes down to brass tax, it’s ultimately the choice of the world to ignore the issues that are right in front of our faces or to change the way we do business.
The business of burying our heads in the sand and allowing government to do what it does by allowing the special interests both foreign and domestic to take away the vote of the tax paying American can not simply be ignored.
The business of allowing our politicians to play school-yard games of tag in using issues in the realm of God & Guns to substitute honest debate of the dangers to come can no longer be justified by either side of the issue.
This could be the point where I go back to my earlier arguments of breaking down the two party system or asking Americans to simply open their eyes to the extremes on both sides of the aisle, but I think we’re way past that conversation.
What we need as a country is a conversation based squarely in common sense. The common sense that should have swept the halls of Capitol Hill and the Oval Office when the word came down the pike about Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac and the light bulb clicked reminding them of the billions of dollars these shysters pumped into their political campaigns.
As much as President Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, William Jefferson Clinton, George W. Bush and any other future serious national contender would like to squawk about earmarks and special interests, the hypocrisy will still be glaringly important when we do the math after the election and roaches are forced to flee from hiding.
I don’t find any more glee when it’s a Democrat who worked hand and hand with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae that gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar no more than I get a thrill when it’s a Republican who spoon fed the credit card companies laws that protected their predatory lending practices.
Scandal is scandal; it all comes down to the fundamental point of our country forgetting why we hold our leaders to task.
We hold our leaders to task to avoid the situations we’re experiencing now.
From the faulty intelligence that lead us to invade Iraq to all the events that created the current economic crisis, the question still remains of how we dropped the ball so badly…
The answer to that quandary lies squarely on the dirt-sheet politics we’ve chosen to embrace instead of bringing up the issue of who these politicians are actually working for.
Are they working for the American people or are they too busy trying to rally money for re-election bids that they forgot about the process of representing their constituents.
Even amidst the worst crisis in American history we’ve still failed to change the game.
This is the saddest part of what I’m seeing in this current time period of silence.
Everyone is so comfortable with the slightest bit of ebb and flow of the market that it’s convenient to throw our hands up in the air and thank a higher power for making everything OK.
It’s not OK and it will never be ok until we change our ways. The free, spending America has only taken a recess and even if we do get this magical recovery without working for it, we still have the fundamentals to worry about.
The fundamentals of changing the culture in a Food Industry that would sooner get millions of people sick to make a buck rather than reassessing its practices crisis after crisis.
The fundamentals of CEOs who will take that million dollar bonus while the lowest man or woman on the totem pole, doing all the work on the ground floor, is forced into the streets without a way to feed their family.
The fundamentals of an American society that isn’t willing to see the big picture, when they need to return to the basics, instead of having the arrogance to believe our nation is all powerful and can magically fix any problem that may arise.
The magic wand is busted and needs to be placed in permanent retirement.
We can reach this place when we stop ignoring the power of structure on the local level and place an emphasis on self-reliance instead of the credit card or a national election to make everything better.
This isn’t a call for a Republican or a Democratic philosophy, but rather a cry for the return to common sense. When it truly comes down to the fundamental arguments that are being screamed from either side of the aisle in the form of Gay Rights, Abortion, or Gun Control, none of this will amount to a hill of beans if there’s nothing left for us to call our own.
This fact and this fact alone should be enough for a wake up call if the scourge of unemployment and desperation across the globe wasn’t enough.
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Comment by Anonymous
By the time the tech era dawned, we had already rapidly democratized so much of our socio, poli and economical structure. Once technology was improved and added, it supplemented the democratization process and made it even quicker. We rely too heavily on technology in every facet of life. Just my humble opinion...brought to you from my pc
Comment by Khalfani King
Politics and Culture
Khalfani King
Oldies but Goodies From Campaign 08
Poverty is a reality in our world and is never going to be eradicated just as there will always be those in the world who fall into the category of the elite.
What I was getting at is the corelation between times of economic peril and criminal behavior.
We may recover from this economic crisis on some level but the thirld world nations will never see an equal bounce back.
When left without choices for basic survival these segments of society react with an even greater blow back to our practices of combating Invisble wars that aren't working.
Banks are squarely in my cross hairs as well just as much as our government officials who stuck their noses in where it didn't belong to please the people who helped get them elected.
When it comes down to it our leaders trampled on the Constitution and digressed from it's original inention of working for the American people.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Citi group and rest of the gang are the only beneficiareies of this economic crisis and the American tax payer is the one left at the dinner table to pay the tab while these groups post record profits.
The situation isn't right on a grand scale and we are far from correcting it.
We need a reality check but it may already be too late for it to matter...