No sooner has the wholesale slaughter of the gentle turkeys ended, all for the consumption in one single day of gluttony in November, than begins the cutting down of the pine trees for Xmas. A season for rejoicing in the capitalist economy. The dead will be replaced with next year's crop. The circle remains unbroken.
When the US invaded Iraq earlier this year, I was certain that the Iraqis would have fought on the battlefield much longer. I was sure Baghdad would have been a death trap for the Americans. I realize I misinterpreted the military campaign, the death trap is more like a daily riot of AK-47s and RPGs, rather than an organized campaign of bloody hit-and-run attacks. Perhaps I'm not too far off the mark, in at least one point.
55,000 deaths in Vietnam, averaged over an 11 year period, is a few hundred a month, for sure. We haven't seen these kinds of numbers yet, November 2003 has been the highest so far with 60/month. An increase in the brutality can be reasonably assumed next year, in 2004, when Bush introduces additional battalions of Marines into the fighting in Iraq. Something to look forward to.
I have to wonder if Bush is preparing a present for the Iraqi guerrillas this Christmas. Maybe he will initiate a campaign of carpet bombings, like Nixon did during the holiday season of Dec., 1972.
The little moral booster he did for the troops in Thanksgiving, 2003 reminds me a little like Pres. Jefferson Davis going to a Confederate Army base and giving a speech to rally against the North Bush has a serious handicap insofar as he has no massive public works job to get American back to work. No space spectaculars to build up our prestige in the world, like Nixon had with the Apollo manned moon missions (1969-1972), something which indirectly helped to marginalize the Vietnam war and temporarily kept it out of the headlines and into the second page. At least it bought the ruling class a lot of time to make a killing off military hardware like bombs, helicopters and missiles.
Again, it's clear that Bush will have to do something to divert our attention from the debacle in Iraq. Unfortunately, NASA's prestige is down for the count with the last 2 Space Shuttles being blown into smithereens. Obviously a quality control problem. In any case, they can't do anything for Bush. He's on his own. It will take more than a song and dance routine to save him next year.
A protracted guerilla war will eventually wear down the occupying army. The US sooner or later is facing a pullout or it will bleed itself dry in Iraq. And even if it didn't, there has never been a case of a democracy being created by attacking with armies and destroying an existing society. It didn't happen in Nicaragua when the US Marines stormed Managua to create the Somoza dynasty. It won't happen in Iraq, and the only thing they can do over there is to keep the opposition divided as much as possible, like NATO did to Yugoslavia and broke it up into Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Montenegro. They can only rule by absolute fiat and some clever-acting puppets for the PR.
So it's no great prediction to say that this is a disaster for the US in the short run, certainly it will not last as long as Vietnam because in 10 to 12 years, peak world oil reserves will have dissipated and. I would guess the US would begin its conclusive collapse as a superpower, like the USSR. The sooner the better. Because the riff-raff have attained political power and they have built up a powerful armed gang of terrorists -- the Congress and the Pentagon. These people control thousands of nuclear weapons, which is probably the worst situation imaginable for the world.
As I understand it, a true patriot is someone who would rather die within his own country instead of anywhere else in the world. Certainly not to defend the freedom to kill, on the other side of the planet, and definitely not for this particularly brutal mob who muscled their way into power, with black boxes for voting machines.
While I'm on the subject of the elections, I think that 2004 will not be
encouraging. Even if Bush lost, none of the leading Democrats have
dared imagine a pull-out from Iraq. Even former President and Nobel
Peace Prize recipient Jimmy Carter can't come to grips with that.
On the homefront, I predict the "Miami model" of police repression
against the FTAA protesters will serve to bolster the imperio-fascist
state. Selective attacks against key activists, random attacks against
the rest.
It's easy to indoctrinate a recently discharged GI who honed his skills
on the streets of Baghdad. He'll find he had learned some useful job
skills overseas, and it'll be applied here at home, as well. It's all
about Homeland Security now.
Bush's economy has generated few civilian sector jobs. All the money is
being spent on strengthening the military-industrial complex. There
will be more homelessness.