When Greed Becomes Treason
The revelation last week on the sale of our major eastern and gulf coast ports to the United Arab Emirates, is a good example of how the logic of greed ultimately trumps national security.
Is it reasonable to suspect that some of the same wealthy UAE potentates who openly visited Bin Laden and secretly funneled money to him before 9-11, might also want to funnel a bomb into Baltimore? Could the fact they they happen to be the owners of the port make it any easier for them, in spite of all the best efforts of a drasically underfunded port security and Coast Guard? Of course it could, and to pretend otherwise is silliness boardering on treason.
When you think about it, it would have made more sense to have invaded the UAE and let Sadam Hussein manage our ports, than the other way around. After all, Saddam was much better at keeping terrorists out of Iraq than Bush has been. The UAE had much more to do with financing 9/11, and they are just as much a dictatorship. They’ve had much more to do with the proliferation of nuclear weapons than Iraq, it would have been far easier to transform the UAE into a democracy, and far fewer American lives would have ben lost in the process.
Currently, voters don’t decide anything in the UAE – a politburo of potentates at the top do. They hand-pick the president and they choose members of the legislature. Almost three quarters of the population is made up of servants and workers who are routinely exploited and don’t even have the same rights as citizens.
Are Americans dying in Iraq in order to establish more benevolent dictatorships in the Middle East? How can it be that at the same time that Americans are supposedly dying for democracy in one Arab country, the tyrants from another Arab country are esablishing a beachhead on American soil? How could any American government be so cynical and cruel as to ask Americans to fight and die for democracy in Iraq, while rewarding the tyrants next door with a little piece of America? It boggles the mind.
But if it makes absolutely no sense morally and politically, in terms of encouraging the spread of democracy in the Middle East, and it makes no sense in terms of safeguarding national security and protecting the homeland, then how does it make sense, and why is it being done?
It makes sense when you understand that the Bush regime is the most corrupt government in American history. It makes sense once you realize that it was never in his political interest to forestall another attack.
Bush’s claim that he didn’t know the deal was happening, is a lot like Cheney’s claim that he knew nothing about Halliburton’s no-bid government contracts. Just another blatant lie by the most corrupt gang of thieves that ever raped the American taxpayer. The fact that Bush strongly defended a decision that he claims to know nothing about – even going so far as to threaten to veto any interference from Congress – demonstrates that he not only knew about it, but he also knows what’s in his own financial interest, and exactly why he needs to cover up his involvement. The Bush family has had an extensive and continuing business relationship with the dictators of the UAE through the Carlyle Group. With Bush it is never whether he’s lying – it’s knowing why he is lying, and it always comes down to greed.
Bush and his wealthy pals have spent five years raiding the US Treasury. They’ve hauled out whatever cash they could, and all that’s left are the fixtures - things like ports, national forests and parks. These are now in the process of being liquidated to pay off creditors like the UAE. What Bush has basically done is to put a reverse mortgage on America - the proceeds falling to crooks like Bush and Cheney, while American assets fall into the hands of totalitarian govenments like the UAE . It gives a new, and very literal meaning to selling out America.
According to the Washington Post
"The real absurdity here is that Congress doesn't seem to realize that an Arab-owned company's management of America's ports is just a taste of what is coming. Greater foreign ownership of U.S. assets is an inevitable consequence of the reckless tax-cutting, deficit-ballooning fiscal policies that Congress and the White House have pursued. By encouraging the United States to consume more than it produces, these fiscal policies have sucked in imports so fast that the nation is nearing a trillion-dollar annual trade deficit. Those are IOUs on America's future, issued by a spendthrift Congress.
"The best quick analysis I've seen of the fiscal squeeze comes from New York University professor Nouriel Roubini … He notes that with the U.S. current account deficit running at about $900 billion in 2006, "in a matter of a few years foreigners may end up owning most of the U.S. capital stocks: ports, factories, corporations, land, real estate and even our national parks." Until recently, he writes, the United States has been financing its trade deficit through debt -- namely, by selling U.S. Treasury securities to foreign central banks…
But as Roubini says, foreigners may decide they would rather hold their dollars in equity investments than in U.S. Treasury debt. "If we continue with our current patterns of spending above our incomes, by 2013 the U.S. foreign liabilities could be as high as 75 percent of GDP and an increasing fraction of such liabilities will be in the form of equity," he explains. "So, let us stop whining about the dangers of unfriendly foreigners owning our firms and assets and get used to it."
Seen in this light, selling our ports to the UAE not only makes sense, it’s fiscally inevitable. What doesn’t make sense is to think the rich can keep on getting much richer than everyone else every year - as they have been doing and are determined to keep on doing - without selling out the country in the process. If you are poor or middle class, living beyond your means is when your accumulated debt exceeds your ability to pay. But when you are rich and control the government, your additional income equals the whatever additional debt you can rack up on the government’s credit card.
The sale of our ports to the UAE is emblematic of the fact that it is not they who are becoming more like us, it is we who are becoming more and more like them. We can’t hold Baghdad, but they will hold the port of New York. Bush’s policies are not geared towards making the Middle East more free democratic; they are geared towards making the United States less free and more plutocratic. He’s not fighting a war on terrorism - he’s fighting a war against the poor on behalf of corporate interests, and he’s giving the UAE royals our ports because they are his natural allies in that conflict. Greed has no patriotism – the greedy only use patriotism to increase their bottom line.
Jesus said that you cannot serve God and mammon at the same time. Nor can you serve the interests of all Americans and satisfy your own insatiable greed at the same time. Most of all you cannot you be a toady for corporate interests and make America safe and secure. The sale of our major ports to UAE is just the latest and most obvious proof of this.
One of the myths long disseminated by the corporate media itself is that a capitalist economy would force governments to be more open and democratic. But Communist China is proof that political tyranny is perfectly compatible with a vigorous capitalist economy, and the UAE demonstrates this on a much smaller scale. It is much more correct to say that democracy is incompatible with corporate bribes and influence, and that the systematic secrecy, torture, lawlessness and corruption of the Bush regime is proof of that.
Whatever he pretends, it has never been in Bush’s political interest to foil another terrorist attack. His willful negligence goes far beyond selling our ports to a dictatorship like the UAE. It is reflected in the fact that he has done absolutely nothing to secure our ports over the past five years. It is reflected in the fact that he is pouring American lives and treasure into a counry that had nothing to do with international terrorism, while Osama Bin Laden is still alive and well and making home videos. The same criminal neglegence that existed before 9/11, when he got the briefing saying that “Osama Bin Laden is Determined To Attack the US”, has only increased and escalated and become public policy.
The more Bush cuts funding for first responers, the more he neglects our ports and other potential targets like nuclear installations, the more he covers up all the mistakes of the past and attacks everyone who even points them out, the more he packs agencies like FEMA with incompetent political cronies, the longer the blunder in Iraq continues and the more he alienates America from the rest of the world – the less secure we are as a nation. Because even though Bush talks about national security, he really only does what’s in his own greedy interest.
Is it reasonable to suspect that some of the same wealthy UAE potentates who openly visited Bin Laden and secretly funneled money to him before 9-11, might also want to funnel a bomb into Baltimore? Could the fact they they happen to be the owners of the port make it any easier for them, in spite of all the best efforts of a drasically underfunded port security and Coast Guard? Of course it could, and to pretend otherwise is silliness boardering on treason.
When you think about it, it would have made more sense to have invaded the UAE and let Sadam Hussein manage our ports, than the other way around. After all, Saddam was much better at keeping terrorists out of Iraq than Bush has been. The UAE had much more to do with financing 9/11, and they are just as much a dictatorship. They’ve had much more to do with the proliferation of nuclear weapons than Iraq, it would have been far easier to transform the UAE into a democracy, and far fewer American lives would have ben lost in the process.
Currently, voters don’t decide anything in the UAE – a politburo of potentates at the top do. They hand-pick the president and they choose members of the legislature. Almost three quarters of the population is made up of servants and workers who are routinely exploited and don’t even have the same rights as citizens.
Are Americans dying in Iraq in order to establish more benevolent dictatorships in the Middle East? How can it be that at the same time that Americans are supposedly dying for democracy in one Arab country, the tyrants from another Arab country are esablishing a beachhead on American soil? How could any American government be so cynical and cruel as to ask Americans to fight and die for democracy in Iraq, while rewarding the tyrants next door with a little piece of America? It boggles the mind.
But if it makes absolutely no sense morally and politically, in terms of encouraging the spread of democracy in the Middle East, and it makes no sense in terms of safeguarding national security and protecting the homeland, then how does it make sense, and why is it being done?
It makes sense when you understand that the Bush regime is the most corrupt government in American history. It makes sense once you realize that it was never in his political interest to forestall another attack.
Bush’s claim that he didn’t know the deal was happening, is a lot like Cheney’s claim that he knew nothing about Halliburton’s no-bid government contracts. Just another blatant lie by the most corrupt gang of thieves that ever raped the American taxpayer. The fact that Bush strongly defended a decision that he claims to know nothing about – even going so far as to threaten to veto any interference from Congress – demonstrates that he not only knew about it, but he also knows what’s in his own financial interest, and exactly why he needs to cover up his involvement. The Bush family has had an extensive and continuing business relationship with the dictators of the UAE through the Carlyle Group. With Bush it is never whether he’s lying – it’s knowing why he is lying, and it always comes down to greed.
Bush and his wealthy pals have spent five years raiding the US Treasury. They’ve hauled out whatever cash they could, and all that’s left are the fixtures - things like ports, national forests and parks. These are now in the process of being liquidated to pay off creditors like the UAE. What Bush has basically done is to put a reverse mortgage on America - the proceeds falling to crooks like Bush and Cheney, while American assets fall into the hands of totalitarian govenments like the UAE . It gives a new, and very literal meaning to selling out America.
According to the Washington Post
"The real absurdity here is that Congress doesn't seem to realize that an Arab-owned company's management of America's ports is just a taste of what is coming. Greater foreign ownership of U.S. assets is an inevitable consequence of the reckless tax-cutting, deficit-ballooning fiscal policies that Congress and the White House have pursued. By encouraging the United States to consume more than it produces, these fiscal policies have sucked in imports so fast that the nation is nearing a trillion-dollar annual trade deficit. Those are IOUs on America's future, issued by a spendthrift Congress.
"The best quick analysis I've seen of the fiscal squeeze comes from New York University professor Nouriel Roubini … He notes that with the U.S. current account deficit running at about $900 billion in 2006, "in a matter of a few years foreigners may end up owning most of the U.S. capital stocks: ports, factories, corporations, land, real estate and even our national parks." Until recently, he writes, the United States has been financing its trade deficit through debt -- namely, by selling U.S. Treasury securities to foreign central banks…
But as Roubini says, foreigners may decide they would rather hold their dollars in equity investments than in U.S. Treasury debt. "If we continue with our current patterns of spending above our incomes, by 2013 the U.S. foreign liabilities could be as high as 75 percent of GDP and an increasing fraction of such liabilities will be in the form of equity," he explains. "So, let us stop whining about the dangers of unfriendly foreigners owning our firms and assets and get used to it."
Seen in this light, selling our ports to the UAE not only makes sense, it’s fiscally inevitable. What doesn’t make sense is to think the rich can keep on getting much richer than everyone else every year - as they have been doing and are determined to keep on doing - without selling out the country in the process. If you are poor or middle class, living beyond your means is when your accumulated debt exceeds your ability to pay. But when you are rich and control the government, your additional income equals the whatever additional debt you can rack up on the government’s credit card.
The sale of our ports to the UAE is emblematic of the fact that it is not they who are becoming more like us, it is we who are becoming more and more like them. We can’t hold Baghdad, but they will hold the port of New York. Bush’s policies are not geared towards making the Middle East more free democratic; they are geared towards making the United States less free and more plutocratic. He’s not fighting a war on terrorism - he’s fighting a war against the poor on behalf of corporate interests, and he’s giving the UAE royals our ports because they are his natural allies in that conflict. Greed has no patriotism – the greedy only use patriotism to increase their bottom line.
Jesus said that you cannot serve God and mammon at the same time. Nor can you serve the interests of all Americans and satisfy your own insatiable greed at the same time. Most of all you cannot you be a toady for corporate interests and make America safe and secure. The sale of our major ports to UAE is just the latest and most obvious proof of this.
One of the myths long disseminated by the corporate media itself is that a capitalist economy would force governments to be more open and democratic. But Communist China is proof that political tyranny is perfectly compatible with a vigorous capitalist economy, and the UAE demonstrates this on a much smaller scale. It is much more correct to say that democracy is incompatible with corporate bribes and influence, and that the systematic secrecy, torture, lawlessness and corruption of the Bush regime is proof of that.
Whatever he pretends, it has never been in Bush’s political interest to foil another terrorist attack. His willful negligence goes far beyond selling our ports to a dictatorship like the UAE. It is reflected in the fact that he has done absolutely nothing to secure our ports over the past five years. It is reflected in the fact that he is pouring American lives and treasure into a counry that had nothing to do with international terrorism, while Osama Bin Laden is still alive and well and making home videos. The same criminal neglegence that existed before 9/11, when he got the briefing saying that “Osama Bin Laden is Determined To Attack the US”, has only increased and escalated and become public policy.
The more Bush cuts funding for first responers, the more he neglects our ports and other potential targets like nuclear installations, the more he covers up all the mistakes of the past and attacks everyone who even points them out, the more he packs agencies like FEMA with incompetent political cronies, the longer the blunder in Iraq continues and the more he alienates America from the rest of the world – the less secure we are as a nation. Because even though Bush talks about national security, he really only does what’s in his own greedy interest.
posted by R. Stephen Hanchett at 11:06 AM
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