More May Days
Today marks a few other holidays that I missed. President Bush marked the National Day of Prayer by recounting how past presidents prayed, and sort of taking a few shots at himself:
[W]hen you think about our faith you can find it in the Pledge of Allegiance, you can find an expression of American faith in the Declaration of Independence, and you can find it in the coins in our pockets. I used to carry coins -- (laughter) -- in about 10 months I'll be carrying them again. (Laughter and applause.)
The fidelity to faith has been present in our nation's leaders from its very start.... On John Adams's first day in the White House, he wrote a prayer that is now etched in marble on the fireplace in the State Dining Room, and he prayed, "May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof." Now we'll leave it to the historians to judge whether or not that happened throughout our history. (Laughter.)
Bush also made a speech appreciating the start of Asian Pacific American History Month, and of course, made his Law Day proclamation.
And you wouldn't know it from Bush's speeches, but today marks the fifth anniversary of the unfurling of the "Mission Accomplished" banner. Hillary Clinton and even John McCain took the opportunity to lash out on war policy. Barack Obama said Clinton and McCain's gas tax plans were gimmicks, like the sign.
Even if Bush was silent, press rep Dana Perino did comment on the banner yesterday. As USA Today reported:
"President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. "And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year."
Perino has my number.
Mission(s) accomplished
What most people don’t realize is that George W. Bush accomplished all his primary goals in the first few months of the war, and the banner heralding “mission accomplished” was correct.
1. By attacking at the time he did, he stopped Hussein switching to trading in Euros, not dollars, a change that Hussein had in motion. This saved Bush’s banking and finance friends from financial troubles.
2. By attacking when he did, he aborted the U.N.’s planned easing of trade sanctions, which most experts agree would have led to Hussein increasing his oil exporting. That would have lowered the price of oil, which would have hurt the profits of Bush’s oil friends, especially the Saudis. It would also have given the advantage to the Russians and Chinese, as Hussein had better relations with them and likely would have favored them over the U.S. in oil trading. That would have upset the advantage of power, both militarily and industrially, which the American military-industrial complex always uses war to maintain. (The bottom line has been: if some country is starting to gain on us economically, or doesn’t allow our companies favored status, or just shows signs of out-competing us, and we can get away with it, we will somehow label them as a threat and send in our military to beat them up—see Blum’s Rogue State for details).
3. The fact that our own oil companies have yet to gain control of the Iraqi fields is secondary to the fact that the war has weakened the oil output, keeping supply limited, and hence the price up.
4. It’s a known fact that the CIA had, in 2001, people in Afghanistan tracking Osama. After 9/11, they repeated their request for a few thousand troops, which is what they needed to capture him--no new troops, no new expense, just use what the military already had to capture Bin Laden. Unfortunately, that wasn’t Bush’s goal. Instead, he shut down the CIA operation and had the Air Force dump its inventory of bombs so that his defense contractor cohorts could sell the Air Force more bombs. This tactic also leads to #5.
5. By ensuring that he got the U.S. into an open-ended occupation, he opened the field for the defense-related industries to have a guaranteed source of income for years and years. As a corollary, Iraq becomes a stepping stone to attacking Iran.
6. The other effect of the ongoing occupation is to drain the federal budget so that it would be easy for conservatives to shut down the much-hated domestic spending programs, which would then open the door for further privatization, again benefiting big corporations (perhaps no coincidence that the presentation was made on the day that honors international labor).
7. Add in the excuses to undermine civil rights in the name of “homeland security”.
George W. Bush had effectively set all of this in motion—essentially a fait accompli--by the time he stepped onto that carrier deck.
Posted by: Noel Newnam | May 02, 2008 at 12:58 PM