March 13, 2006 - “If America pulls out of Iraq it will descend into chaos!” Well, it is hard to see how the country we invaded could become more chaotic than it already is with the occupation troops remaining in place. “If America pulls out of Iraq it will be wracked by Civil War!” How do you describe what is going on in that country as anything other than a sectarian Civil War far more deadly than that with which Britain dealt in Northern Ireland? Americans are being killed and maimed at the accustomed rate but those casualties have been pushed off the front pages by the mounting Iraqi toll as the Sunnis and Shiites sort out their differences. Secretary Rumsfeld says that he expects the Iraqi armed services will be able to deal with the existing civil turmoil in their country. He said so as he asked Congress to borrow another $92B to spend on the war in Iraq.

He asked for the money even as Secretary Snow of the Treasury announced that he was going to dip into the retirement funds of Federal employees in order to stay below the government’s credit limit. Secretary Rice was right there along side the Defense Secretary endorsing the spending request. Meanwhile the President of the United States is asking the Republican Congress for the line item veto - declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court when a Democratic Congress gave it to President Clinton. He says he needs it to rein in runaway Government spending authorized by a runaway Republican Congress.

Are these people even talking to one another? What do they discuss when they get together for Cabinet meetings? Baseball? At least that is something that they can agree that the President knows a little something about. But then the President is the guy who traded off Sammy Sosa before he was Slammin’ Sammy. He also is the guy who did not know anything about his players and steroids. He doesn’t know anything about torture either. I guess that he figures that if you call it a “diet supplement” then it isn’t a steroid and if you call it “coercive questioning” then it isn’t torture. I guess that if you call it a “booming economy” then the nation is not head over heels in debt with its jobs, capital, infrastructure, and profits increasingly outsourced without a thought of the day of reckoning that is sure to come.

Wal-Mart sets the standard for our consumer economy and that standard is “Made in China”. It’s on the label of the shirt you wear even though the brand-name is a familiar one to American customers. The old union slogan, “Buy American” just isn’t possible anymore. There are mighty few things that can claim to be American products in this Twenty-First Century. The Japanese car your neighbor drives to work is more likely to have been made in Tennessee than is the Ford you bought that was assembled in Mexico of Malaysian manufactured parts.

China is, as we all know, the world’s best and last Communist power. Its manufacturing economy is, as we all know, based on coerced labor. It is also the largest investor in US government securities and only behind Britain and Japan in investments in America’s corporate bonds. Who does a falling dollar benefit? We are dependent on China’s continued goodwill and trade. Mao has won and we are left without a real enemy to unite and rally against. That leaves us with the Axis of Evil to unite us and that is why the War in Iraq is so important.