democracy for all?

[mamamaine]

People get what they vote for. Unfortunately, the great majority of people are too busy with their everyday lives to care to dig into the background of potential candidates or to care about being politically involved. Therefore, most are easily swayed by false promises and lies. Others, mostly Republicans, concentrate all of their attention on red herring issues such as abortion and gay marriage while their Republican representatives vote for measures that are often against the economic self-interest of their constituency.

We, the people, have a lot more power than we actually use. Imagine the potential power that people could have over corporate control of government if we actually made us of organized boycotts. Imagine if people actually read up on the voting recorRAB of the politicians they vote for and read up about the consequences of those voting recorRAB.

I know all this is wishful thinking. I mostly just want to note that we, the people, are also to blame for our current predicament.

[nae_butt]

My understanding is that the Bush administration had the naive notion that, once we overthrew the Baathists, the Iraqis would, for the most part, organize themselves or that the UN or other agencies would help with the reconstruction. Bush was against nation-building and had the naive notion that we wouldn't have to engage in it. The expertise was there to warn him of the consequences but the arrogant incompetence of the Bush administration was firmly set in its own minRABet.

As for the good intentions, Packer (in "The Assasin's Gate") seems to make a convincing point that a democratic Iraq was a major goal (mainly with the intent of stabilizing the region). The WMD arguement was apparently the only one that all agencies could agree on.

I am not saying that good intentions meant good methoRAB. As the saying goes "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". Even the worst dictators in history had some level of good intentions, at least toward their own people. Though it is tempting to do so, one cannot simplistically assume that one's advisary is all-bad. There is always a balance. Ultimately, though, governments are judged more by their actions than by their intentions and US actions in Iraq have shown our government to have a degree of arrogance and incompetence that is inexcuseable.

[HAHA! randomness]

For a nation with the world's largest and most modern military to unilaterally invade and occupy a small, third-tier sovereign nation with an antiquated military without provocation or threat is the epitome of arrogance and incompetence. To do so with the intent of ideological change (a democratic Iraq) is criminal by most standarRAB, particularly when destroying the countries entire civilian infrastructure during invasion. I can't accept naive US leadership as a rationalization for such an act. I view it as self-serving aggression, the USD issue and obtaining a stable supply of oil on US terms. The resulting incompetence of that arrogance is highly visible with Iraq's current civil war and switch from a secular governed nation to one governed by Sharia Law, which has no provision for many democratic principles such as equality. The right to vote in a nation dominated by such law means little to the well-being of the majority of citizens.

[wfy24]

We used the Vinnell corporation, a CIA front, to train the SANG (Saudi Arabia Nationa Guard). SANG is NOT a defensive military force like it is int he US. It is the house fo sauRAB private plice force more or less. Vinnell makes no secret of their involvement.

http://www.vinnell.com/militytraining.html

This is from the US state department and gives an outline of what we are trainign these fine folks to do:

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27937.htm

A Corpwatch article explaining the targets during the Saudi terrorist strikes:

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=7850

And another:

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2003/539/539p14.htm

IMO those atacks were pretty symbolic of our war on terror in general. While the attacks were portrayed as attacks against good, god fearing American comapanies doing their best to help out in a second tier nation, as well as attacks against the brave and noble saudi police, it does not take much diggin gto realize that the brave and noble Saudi police were actually the house of sauRAB personal police force, and the god fearing Americans who were targeted were helping to train them. They can pawn off the otehr BS becuase they know that most americans have never heard of the "Vinnell corporation", or have any idea what kind of things they have done in the past for our foreign policy. Hell, most Americans couldn't point on Saudi Arabia on a map wihtout sem serious searching. So why shouldn't they feed us one line of BS after the other?

AS for the second point, I don't understand the question. Are you asking what percentage of dollars are invoved as petro dollars? If so, prety much all of them. 83.6 billion barrels per year at $50 per barrel, PLUS pretty much all dollar reserves held by every nation on the planet are held for the purpose of oil purchases. There is really no other use for the dollar.



Both. What people fail to recognize is that a countries economics can be easily and accuratly be compared to any large corporation. The government side of things roughly equates to "administrative costs" ina corporation. A country, just like a corporation, either makes money or looses money every year. The essential numbers for deciding whether a coutyr is making money or loosing money is their trade balance, their debt/equity ratio, and their internal transaction costs. Probably th most important of these is their trade balance (since a country with a positive balance of trade is generally not going to haev problems in the other areas).

The US has not had a postive balance of trade since the 70's. Every year the amont of money flowing out of the country increases (lasty year 728.5 billion left the country). This is where the petro dollar realls shines as one fo the great scams of the 20th century. Since US dollars are essentially worthless outside of the US except for oil purchases, we can pretty much count on those dollars coming back int to the US as investment capital, becuase the only place you can invest US dollars is in the US. Last month was the first time EVER that the balance of payments was off. That is maybe th emost significant financial news in the last 10 years, yet the Americna public just kind of shrugged and went on its way.



This is maybe one fo the most rediculous feel good arguments floating around out there. I know it is the offiicial line that many are selling, but it is so far detached form reality it is rediculous.

First, when the dollar falls in price, our porduction cost INCREASE. Weird, huh? that is becuase the US, once the worlRAB premier supplier of raw materials for industry, is now running a trade deficit for those materials. We import steel, plastics, raw matals (copper, etc...). When the dollr declines, we have to pay increased costs for those materials from our overseas providers.

BUT, to some degree you are correct. With enough inflation, the US will once again be competive. Once the USD is trading in perfect parity with the peso, we will be ALOST be competitive wiht mexico, though China will still be out of our league. Do you really want to live like a mexican peasant? That is where a LOT of americans are headed if we stick to the view that we can essentially inflate our problems away. That is what you are talking about here. Devaluing the dollar to the point that American workers are earning no more than workers in the third world. There is a damn good reason we fight inflation.





Consider this. Last year, the Chinese announced they would be holding their reserves in a basket of currencies instead of holding them in just dollars. They dumped a couple hundred billion dollars. The dollar dropped 4% in 2 hours. What do you think th effect would be with trillions of unwanted dollars beign dumped on the market?



This is kind of like discussions regarding peak oil. The prospect is so terrifying that it defies party politics. Peak oil is a theory with building support, and with a very convincing argument behind it and to date, no reasonable refutation. YET, nobody seems to want to discuss it. It would be the end of the world as we know it, and nobody wants to tackle that.

the potential crash fo the petrodollar is similar in size and scope. We are not just talking financial difficulties, but the end of the world as we know it. The US changing form the worlRAB premier superpower, to the worlRAB largest third world country in a relatively short period of time. The scary part of this is that there is nothing we can do about it. The damage is already done, we just have to wait for the hammer to drop.

Here are some articles that go a lot more in depth than I have here:

http://www.tacomapjh.org/petrodollartheories.htm

Examines the theory that it was the preservation of the petrodollar that led to war with Iraq

http://www.feasta.org/documents/review2/nunan.htm

A european perspective

http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle11715.htm

An interview with William Clark abotu his book "Petrodollar warfare"

http://www.informationclearinghouse....rticle9698.htm

An article from the same site, useful if you don't have a broadband connection to hear the interview. Clarks book is similar to Matthew Simmons "Twilight in the Desert". A lot of folks have been quick to jump up and yell "that can't be right", but nobody seems to be able to refute it.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/26669

An article about the iranian oil bourse and its potential effect on the petrodollar


If you are still interested after all that, I have some links to more technically minded articles.

[kakashi2407]

I agree that it sets a bad precedent for the US to invade a country for ideological purposes without provocation or threat. However, we did not seem to invade in order to permanently stay there (otherwise, I would expect that we would have made more preparation for that) and a democratic Iraq would have been a worthy goal if the Iraqi people had supported it. As is, though the Iraqis were for the most part happy to be rid of Saddam, any goodwill they had toward us was quickly dissipated away by our subsequent bungling of the situation. A democratic Iraq was not the only goal or probably even the main goal of the administration. However, if it had been achieved with the approval of the Iraqi people, then, in my view, that would have been a good result. Unfortunately, among all its other foibles, the administration seemed to engage in a lot of wishful thinking where the results of the war are concerned. For example, they did not seem to put enough thought into whether Iraq even could sustain a democracy, given all its separate factions. As for Sharia law, if the majority of Iraqi citizens (including women) support it, then it is their choice to decide. If they do not want to be run by Sharia law, then they should vote against such measures (to the degree that they have the power to vote for or against it).

I am not saying that we should have invaded. I was against the war from the start. However, misguided as the administration was, there did seem to be some good intentions mixed in with the self-serving ones.

[DrexelRep]

daewoo:
There is a lot to digest in your post and I probably won't have the time to look into all of the links. You seem to jump to worst case conclusions. Perhaps that is justified, perhaps not. I will refrain from judging for myself, one way or the other, until I read up more on the subject (both from your links and Google searches on the topic to look for a debate on this issue). If the situation is as dire as you are predicting, then the issue should be brought up more often in public debate.