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Originally Posted by moosenose
So what you're saying is that we're screwed either way, right? If we play "World Cop" by smacking bad people down, people will hate us, but if we don't play "World Cop" to smack down bad people, people will hate us....
......From my perspective, we've made one big foreign policy mistake over the past 60 years. We've tried to be friends with everybody, instead of making them try to be friends with us.
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This is already over......from the standpoint of financing, the neocon centric foreign policy is unsustainable, and the U.S. is akin to a "dead man walking", but no one has told the condemned, apparently.
How much longer will the suppliers of 13 million barrels of crude oil per day, accept an inexhaustible stream of fiat script that is printed up constantly to pay the bill? The answer is that the suppliers' reluctance is already manifesting itself in the rise of the price to $60, lately. That's $780 million, every day, $285 billion for the next year.
Spending at least $600 billion per year on military related activities and items, to "make us safe", including off-budget expenses in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not accomplishing that mission, and it presses further on the price of oil, as fiat script is printed out of thin air to finance military spending as well.
This past week, for the first time in 20 years, the price of gold rose against the Swiss Franc, perceived to be the soundest paper currency, with 40 percent gold backing. U.S. currency is backed by faith in the fear mongering propagandist who performed last night at Ft. Bragg, and the political and financial structures that he fronts for.
One of the fuckers who have positioned this country where it is today told congress,
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...061100723.html
He said containment of Hussein the previous 12 years had cost "slightly over $30 billion," adding, "I can't imagine anyone here wanting to spend another $30 billion to be there for another 12 years." As of May, the Congressional Research Service estimated that Congress has approved $208 billion for the war in Iraq since 2003.
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The numbers and the policies as they are publicly proclaimed by these thugs, do not add up. The financial costs to sustain the 'way of life" that too many of us perceive as "our right", along with the military and other governmental obligations that we face, cannot be maintained by the economic base of the U.S. private sector. In 2004, China had a GDP that is about 2/3 of U.S. GDP,
and re-invested 46 percent of it (according to the CIA world fact book), and the U.S. re-invested just 15 percent of it's GDP. France re-invested 19 percent, and has a trade deficit of just $300 million, vs. the U.S. trade deficit that is now on a $700 billion annual pace. France has a poverty rate of 7 percent, vs. 12.5 percent in the U.S.
By any financial measure, and by observation of the trends in place, the U.S. is in dire straits if it intends to continue to import 13 million barrels of oil per day, and maintain it's military spending, even if it has not intention of paying back the debt that it has already accrued. The ominous direction that I see us headed towards, is a neocon stragedy of simply using the military to confiscate foreign oil fields form the hands of their current owners, or to dicatate the price that the U.S. will pay at the point of a gun or a nuke.
For some of you, I can predict your answer to the question, "is that how you want to live"? For the rest, what can we do about it? How do we live life in a country with a government that is an example to our children and to the world, when we cannot afford to do it morally or honsetly?