Dear George,
I see you have a little rebellion on your hands. Some of your “loyal” minions are expressing opposition to your grandiose scheme to take out Iran. The problem is this opposition is coming from the very men who would have to do the heavy lifting: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Centcom CINC William Fallon and Army Chief of Staff Peter Pace. Were it not for them, you would be parading through the streets of Tehran in your bulletproof bubble while the people hailed you as a liberator.
I am sure the Big Dick has his knickers in a knot over this and is ready to fire all three. My advice is for you to suggest he take a deep breath, untangle his knickers and take a good, hard look at the situation.
Both of you listen carefully. That tap-tap-tapping sound you hear is opportunity knocking at your door.
Think about it: what is the one thing that is making it impossible or you to shrink government until it is small enough to drown in a bathtub? The short answer is a bloated defense establishment. What is the short answer to this problem? Privatization.
What if Blackwater CEO Erik Prince ran the show? Hell, George, he is your kind of guy. He talks to God and feels he is on a divine mission. He has all sorts of experience in Iraq, and he would be more than happy to privatize the entire operations.
There would be multiple advantages to privatizing the military. Recruitment would no longer be a problem if a buck private were able to earn $1,000 a week. Sure, this would send the defense budget through the roof, but who cares. The money is going to a private enterprise.
Legal or constitutional constraints would not be a problem for a corporate military. It would no longer be necessary to declare war on anyone since the corporation could simply make a business decision to invade any country it wanted to. It would also be free to contract its services out to any country in the world, including ours. For that matter, it could receive contracts from both sides in a regional conflict.
As a private enterprise it would denominate its services in billable hours. This means that after it invaded and trashed a country, it could bill the vanquished country for its services.
On top of all that, you bring the Corporatist State to completion by splitting power from politics. At last, you could achieve the neoliberal dream of the withering away of the State.
However, there is an even bigger picture to consider.
Here is where I run you around the barn a couple of times, so put on your running shoes and get ready for a major workout.
The dynamic that drives the world is capital, as distinguished from capitalism, which was one of the many ways capital expressed itself. During the Cold War, capital drove both the Soviets and us. Rather than opposites, we were the flip sides of the same coin. The Corporatist State is simply the latest expression of this phenomenon.
Capital can only survive through asset stripping, be the assets monetary, natural or human. Tragically, assets are limited. As natural assets have declined, capital, in its globalized mode, is forced to strip more and more human assets.
It is a fact that asset-stripping produces waste, and human assets are no exception to this rule. The production of this human waste has resulted in an exponential increase is the slums and favelas that are the cancerous growths attaching themselves to the world’s mega cities. These favelas are hotbeds of future rebellions as criminal gangs gradually gain control of them.
This gives capital a golden opportunity to recycle this human waste into the mercenaries necessary to continue the pathological growth that is the key to its survival. As a global private army sucked up more and more of this human refuse, it would continue to grow in size. Eventually there would be fewer and fewer human resources to strip out and the private army would be so large and so powerful there would be naught left to conquer.
This is when capital would enter its terminal phase as the private army turns against it self and begin a process of disintegration just as the empires of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan did. This would kick off a ritual of self-destruction that would continue until only a small group of warriors was left to inherit the wasteland that remained.
So, you see, George. Deep within every pile of shit there is a gem waiting to be found. All you have to do is a little digging.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
8:23:39 AM
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