Thursday, October 10, 2002

Wider War Dept. War is hard to control once it breaks out.  While most Senators in the debate on Bush’s war resolution say that they are voting for peace, to persuade Saddam to disarm, they are actually setting up a situation that will spin wildly out of control.   Here is a chilling example from Haaretz.  Some Israeli Arabs fear that an attack on Iraq will provide the Israeli government cover to transfer the Arab population from the West Bank, and even within Israel, to Jordan.    According to Haaretz, Salem Jubran, the editor in chief of the newspaper Al-Ahli has heard "talk that the Sharon government will exploit the attack on Iraq to realize the crazy ideas of the transfer gang in the government." He fears that "both the Sharon government and the more extreme elements in the right - the fascists and the racists - no longer differentiate between Israeli Arabs and West Bank Palestinians. They are now prepared to say out loud that Jordan is the Palestinian state. If this war happens, it will be a golden opportunity for the lunatics."   As for the Americans, Jubran says "There has never before been such Arab hatred for Americans as now exists. There are a million reasons to hate them: they are anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, imperialist. The hatred for them is as strong as it was in 1956, during the Soviet era. Among the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and Israel, I cannot recall such a strong consensus as this against the Americans and personally against the president, one which the secular and the communists and the Islamics all agree to."   Bush argues that war will destroy terrorism.  The history of the last century shows that when entire populations are powerless, yet united in hatred, they in fact become the source for huge outpourings of terrorism.  Suicide bombers may not remain only an Israeli problem, once the full war spins out of control. 12:23:20 PM   comment []    The Cost of Fanaticism Most of us think of the cost of fanaticism as harm done—such as the destruction wrought by Al Qaeda, or the repression of women by male religious zealots, either Muslim or Christian.  But there is another cost as well.  When our leaders our caught up in a fanaticism of their own, we lose sight of real changes that demand a response.   George Bush has all the characteristics of a fanatic.  He has a monolithic world view that has no room for change or adaptation to new circumstances.  Because of his inexperience in foreign affairs, he tends to impose his black and white view on the world.  When he was governor of Texas executing hundreds of people with an almost farcical lack of process, he never wavered from his belief that every person killed was guilty.  That is a form of fanaticism.  When he looks into his heart and sees the world in stark terms of good and evil, he is no different than Osama bin Laden.  It’s just that Bush’s fanaticism matches aspects of our culture, while Osama’s matches aspects of Arab culture. Today an excellent article in the Wall St. Journal [subscription] reminded me of the cost of our fanatic president chasing war phantoms.  The article discussed the phenomenal rise in Chinese production, to the point where China is becoming the factory floor for the entire world.  "China's rise as a manufacturing base is going to have the same kind of impact on the world that the industrialization of the U.S. had, perhaps even bigger," says Andy Xie, an economist with Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong. “These days, China makes more than 50% of the cameras sold world-wide, 30% of the air conditioners and televisions, 25% of the washing machines, and nearly 20% of the refrigerators.” says the WSJ. Foreign investment in China will surpass $50 billion this year, and is increasing every year.  The point of the article is that China is now big enough to have a global deflationary impact, pushing down prices of manufactured goods around the world. This year, the first Chinese joint venture factories for export of cars are being built. So we have a situation where the economic structure of the world is undergoing a revolutionary shift, yet in America we spend billions and billions of dollars on our military, missile defense, and war.  I think we are like a crazed homeowner in the biggest house on the block, spending right and left to make our property perfect, while the neighborhood changes overnight.  We need to look at how our society provides economic value in a world where China dominates manufacturing.  It is not going to be as the world’s rent-a-cop.  Our upcoming war with the Arabs is a diversion, and in the global sense, will probably cause us to spend our lives and treasure while societies like China, who avoid this conflict, become the new centers of power.  The weakness of those who argue for American empire is that true global power comes from economic output, not from the barrel of a gun.  Will our children and grandchildren be defending an empty house? 8:30:29 AM   comment []

© Copyright 2002 Toby Sackton. Last update: 12/26/2002; 9:30:22 PM.