Playing Footsie with Al Qaeda

The FBI is making a diligent search for Al Qaeda operatives in the U.S. this week. They want to give them tickets to travel to Syria and Yemen, where Al Qaeda is now allied with the U.S. in the ever changing U.S. War against Terror.

Republicans don't like to talk about it. Democrats don't like to talk about it. The Pentagon and CIA don't like to talk about it. Erstwhile potential candidates for President don't like to talk about it.

In particular Al Qaeda will deny it. Al Qaeda are getting their asses kicked badly enough without being openly associated with their (former) Great Satan, the United States of Christian Crusaders and Jew Lovers.

But the fact of the matter is the U.S. has new enemies, and so does Al Qaeda. The most prominent are ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and the government of Syria led by President Assad.

New enemies means new friends. Al Qaeda was already fighting two major U.S. enemies, Assad and ISIS. But they were also still fighting some of our friends in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Yemen situation is the tipping point, which is actually quite queer, but then you can't find a group of queerer idiots than the people who run the U.S. government and security establishment. They don't like the Houthis (formally Ansar Allah).

As far as I can tell, the U.S. people (except our own ultra-orthodox nut cases) should like the Houthis, but then not only am I not in charge, and Barack won't even return my phone calls.

The Houthis are Shia Islam, which is the nepotistic branch of Islam that believes that actual descendents of Mohammed should be in charge. In any case they started out peaceful, were oppressed by the U.S. and Saudi backed puppet government of what's-his-name (do you have as much trouble keeping track of all the U.S. puppet governments as I do? Could we not just have one Puppet to Rule Them All, or maybe at most one per continent?), and did just what the Tea Party would do: got out their guns.

I won't boor you with detail, but here we are in March 2015, and the Houthis have kicked the butt of the current U.S. puppet, "President" Hadi. They don't control all of Yemen yet, and the International Community (that would be the U.S. and its hand-puppet Merry Olde England) are pretending that Hadi is still the Government of Yemen.

Fortunately Hadi still has some people fighting with him against the "rebels." Guess who. No, Guess again. Have you not been paying attention? Al Qaeda.

Now the circle is complete. I'm not saying Al Qaeda is a U.S. sock puppet. That will come later. But they can't fight those terrible Houthis and ISIS and Syria's Assad without weapons.

You know the type. Well, maybe you don't get around that much, so let me tell you about the type. They say they like Allah and Mohammed, but what they really like is weapons and mayhem. So if you want to be friends, just hook them up with the world's biggest producer of arms and mayhem. The United States of America, Inc. It will make them the Mouse that Roared.

As in the Arms for Contras campaign, it is a bit too early for Republicans in Congress to berate Democrats as yellow-bellied liberals for refusing to directly send arms and trainers to Al Qaeda to help fight terrorism. No, helping will be done through the CIA/Pentagon black budgets, filtered through Saudi or United Arab Emirate obscure trading companies.

So let me be the first to say, thanks for switching sides! Welcome to the Good Guys! I hear you are good soldiers. I am glad you are now fighting against the enemies of the U.S. If I'm ever in Yemen or Syria, I'll buy you a beer. I hear any one of you is the equivalent of 3 Navy Seals on the battlefield, and at a tenth the pay.

I'm glad you are now fighting for my country. Because I sure as shit would not do it myself.

Gone Girl Politics and Politicians

Last night I did my usual volunteer stint at the community-operated Arena Theater and then watched Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. Because my wife Jan had read the novel by Gillian Flynn, I knew the gist, which only detracted a little from empathizing alternately with the main characters, Nick Dunne and Amazing Amy.

Naturally it reminded me of the current state of political affairs in the United States. Nick Dunne could represent the Democratic Party, and Amazing Amy could represent the Republican Party. Or maybe a better fit is Nick Dunne represents the Republican Party, and Amy represents the Democratic Party.

The citizens and voters of the United States are represented by the people of the smallish town in Missouri where the happy married couple has moved after losing their respective high-powered writing jobs in New York City. At times they sympathize with Nick, when they think his wife Amy was kidnapped. At times they hate Nick, when they think he killed Amy.

This is a story of multiple levels of deception. That is pretty much politics in a nutshell. Many Democrats believe their party has been hijacked. They voted for Nick (not Hillary), peace and prosperity in 2006, got a Democratic Party controlled Congress starting in 2007 and had full control of Congress and the Executive Branch after Barack Obama won the election of 2008. But instead of peace and prosperity, by then the nation was in the Great Recession, and Obama kept finding reasons to keep killing people in the Middle East and even extended the war to much of Africa.

Obama and Democratic politicians may have made a vow of marriage to Democratic voters, but marriage is not so easy. With the Pentagon waving its tits about, no wonder the boys (and the girls too, Pelosi and Feinstein et al) got distracted. No money! Just run up the credit cards and hope that sooner or later something will come up to keep the nation's head above water. And if a few million, well tens of millions, of Americans lose their jobs and life savings before things get straightened out, that is not because Nick was not trying to be a good husband.

Amy could also represent the Democrats, waving her Ivy League degrees around and refusing to get pregnant, but she is from a rich, cunning family that reminds me of the Bush clan. She was all sex and laughter and wit when her money was mostly inherited, but she turns vicious when she has little to do but play MacHousewife in a MacMansion in the kind of boring small city that breeds your typical Republican voter.

Amy and the Republican leaders, are all about deception. Many Republicans believe their party has been hijacked. The Tea Party types feel the Grand Old Party was hijacked by crony capitalists (it was formed in the late 1850s by a coalition that included crony capitalists). The mainstream Republicans feel the wackos in the Tea Party cause them to lose elections. Worse, if elected, Tea Party Republicans won't vote to spend the money so important to a wide variety of business men who have learned that the government market is much more profitable than the ruinous competition one sometimes encounters in the free market. In American politics everyone liked building roads until the Tea Party came along.

And who needs Al-Qaeda to cripple the economy by blowing up a bridge (in America) or two when Amazing Amy will just deny funds for its repair, until it eventually collapses?

You can't trust any politician. Or the media, or the police. Yet you have to some trust people. That is called society. Choosing who to trust, or how much to trust, is the most important skill you can develop.

"Therefore since the world has still,
Much good, but much less good than ill ...
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good"
— A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

Peace Through Poverty: The Pentagon's New Budget

Today the Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is announcing the the Department of Defense will deal with a shrinking budget largely by reducing the number of paid soldiers, with additional cuts coming from some weapons programs. He would not be doing that if President Barack Obama had not signed off on the ideas. Congress will, as usual, muck with the plan, as each Representative and Senator tries to protect military spending inside his or her district, no matter how at odds with the Pentagon's plans. [See 2015 DoD budget speech transcript]

Bit picture, the ability of the U.S. to bully the other nations of the world will decrease. Bullying will be more selective. We will keep all 11 aircraft carriers, which are great for threatening or bombing nations that don't toe the American line, if they border an ocean. We won't have enough soldiers to easily invade and control large countries like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We should not need too. Imperialism was all fine and good from an economic, if not an ethical, standpoint, during the 20th century. But times have changed. Imperialism is a money loser. The U.S. has proven in the 21st century that it is quite capable of losing all the money it needs to domestically, without loosing even more abroad.

Anyone who does not understand that new roads and bridges in Afghanistan means potholes and collapsing bridges in the U.S. needs an economics course.

In the short run, at least, the American economy continues to recover from the deep dip of 2009. Unfortunately the nation already had a multi-trillion dollar national debt in 2000. Starting in 2002 the national deficit exploded to pay for the "war on terror," and despite that the economy nearly collapsed in 2008, due to the greed and stupidity of—admit it—not just Congress and Bush and Banks and mortgage brokers, but also relatively ordinary Americans who bought vastly overpriced McMansions and bungalows and ordinary track homes and condominiums. In other words, the same idiots, I mean citizens, who elect our Congress and Presidents.

Then in 2009 massive deficit spending began to try to revive the economy, keep people from starving, and prevent a rebellion. The result was a $17 trillion national deficit by the end of 2013. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates extraordinarily low, meaning the interest on the national debt was minimal, like those low-interest introductory mortgage offers of 2005.

As bits of the debt come due for payment the Treasury Department issues new debt. Unless the economy fails to revive, interest rates will rise. Short term debt pays the least interest, but is risky because it has to be renewed often. Long-term debt is safe once placed, but pays much higher interest. As I write this essay 3 month federal debt pays 0.043% per year, zero for practical purposes. 30 year debt pays 3.71%. 2 year debt pays 0.33%.

What the President and Pentagon are acknowledging is that as the average interest rate paid on U.S. debt increases, the amount of tax dollars available for all spending, including military spending, is going to decrease. 1% of $17 trillion is $170 billion. 5% is $850 billion. 10% is $1.7 trillion. Higher interest rates leave politicians 3 options: higher taxes to pay them, lower spending to pay them, or just taking on even more debt, no matter what the interest rate.

Wars and military spending no longer stimulate the economy.

World War II stimulated the depression-era economy, but initial conditions were different back then. There was little national debt when the depression began. The war started in Europe, resulting in a couple of years of peace during which the U.S. could sell anything it could make without actually being in the war.

Iraq and Afghanistan, in contrast, were pure expense for the American taxpayer. They drained the U.S. economically the same way World War II drained the British Empire. That empire, despite its size, fell apart in the 1950s. The Brits could not afford it any longer.

America can no longer afford an empire. Expect that it will be easier for regimes independent of the U.S. to prosper in the future. Expect sane U.S. Presidents (if there were such a thing) to be very careful before committing U.S. fighters to combat in large numbers. If a President wants to both keep up the economy and a military capable of defending U.S. territory, he won't want any international adventures further draining our empty coffers.

U.S. propagandists will probably come up with a better slogan for the new policy than "Peace through Poverty." But that is the era we appear to be heading into.

A Republican Hurricane

Imagine what Hurricane Irene how would affect people if the Tea Party - Republican program for dissolving American government were in full effect.

First of all, most people would have had no warning that the hurricane was coming because the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would have been shut down. The Tea Party declared it a waste of taxpayer dollars. Sure, private weather companies could exist and tell their private clients that weather was about to go wild, and the Pentagon would continue to be well-funded and would have its own weather monitoring capabilities. But having a government service that efficiently serves everyone without charging ... that would be socialism.

For most people the first signs of Irene would be their cardboard boxes blowing away. The Republicans want to eliminate taxpayer-subsidized housing, Social Security payments, unemployment compensation, and Medicare. They do want to charge enough local taxes to pay police to keep the resulting 60 million homeless Americans out of abandoned structures, so boxes would be the new McMansions. You might think a family of four or even one would provide enough weight to hold down a box home against the wind, but you are forgetting that food stamps, a socialist evil, would have been eliminated. People would be too skinny to weigh down a box against hurricane force winds.

But why worry about the lazy socialist rabble? Republicans would be fine. The rich would have even more money because taxes would be even lower, and no government regulations would prevent them from industriously creating jobs for the unemployed people of India and Africa. Warned by their private weather services, the rich would simply fly their private jets to Texas to enjoy the Perry drought. If they lose a few servants trying to protect their mansions and yachts from the weather, they could be easily replaced.

Their are rich Republicans and their are religious Republicans; that is the alliance that has crushed (in our imaginary scenario) the socialist Anti-Christ. The Religious, non-rich Republicans who could still afford ammunition would be getting out their Vietnamese-made Kalashnikovs and perhaps a few still-functioning American made relics of when guns were still manufactured in the United States, before deregulation. You might think they would be protecting their homes against the 30 million homeless people in the path of the Hurricane.
No, they would be in a sectarian war. With church-state separation gone, inter-Christian tensions would have risen to unforeseen (except by me) heights. The hurricane would be the last straw. It would be clearly caused by a lack of appropriate prayer. The Baptists would accuse the Methodists and Catholics of praying wrong. As soon as the winds slowed the majority religion in each locality would go out armed and demanding conversion or death. Surviving Republicans would flee to their respective religious enclaves.

The economy would spiral into Depression that made the 1930's Depression seem like Happy Days. Even the U.S. military would eventually collapse, unable to pay its troops. States would secede from the union, and localities would secede from states.

It would be God's anarchy. Meanwhile, the socialist, religiously tolerant states of the world would get along just fine (as the Soviet economy did in the 1930s) and historians would write first drafts of The Rise and Fall of the American Empire.

China, Aircraft Carriers, and U.S. Bonds

Before getting to the Chinese aircraft carrier issue, let me point out one very important thing missed by almost all commentators.

Osama Bin Laden triumphed, even though he was dead. His secondary goal, after helping to defeat the old Soviet Union, was to defeat the United States. He never expected to invade the U.S. and force everyone to wear beards and turbans. He used his followers' minimal resources to cause an economic and military collapse. The downgrading of U.S. debt (bonds) by Standard & Poor's was a public assessment of the success of Al Qaeda. Americans spent too much energy on global military dominance, too little energy on building a sustainable national economy. We lost, and everyone intelligent now knows we lost. We could still retrieve the situation by using our democratic system to take power away from the ruling corporate security state, but it looks like we are too stupid and lethargic to even do that. So, on to Chinese aircraft carriers.

The cry babies at the Pentagon, led byLeon Panetta, don't want the Chinese navy to have any aircraft carriers. In their minds Chinese aircraft carriers would shift the balance of power in the China Sea and require a buildup of the U.S. Navy in the Western Pacific. Which would require a bigger Navy budget.

The real question should be, given the history of China and aircraft carriers, why don't the Chinese already have a half dozen aircraft carriers? The answer is that China has not been a global military aggressor [Yes, I know, Tibetian nationalists and Vietnamese would disagree]. Of course, any country with a military is in some danger of becoming a military aggressor, but the Chinese Communist Party has a much better history of restraint than the United States Democratic Party does.

China, in the later 1800s and early 1920s, was being torn apart by the Great Powers. In 1914, During World War I, a Japanese proto-carrier, the Wakamiya, lowered 4 seaplanes in the sea, which then attacked German forces in Tsingtao (Qingdao), a German colony in China. No matter how you define the term "first aircraft carrier," by the 1920's these ships were being built by all the great powers, including the United States, Britain, Japan and France. By World War II naval battles were largely won or lost by aircraft launched from the carriers. The Barbaric U.S. attacks on Vietnam were also largely carrier-based.

The United States has been bullying nations with its aircraft carrier based terror bombing for closing in on a century now. Who are Barack Obama and Leon Panetta to tell the Chinese they can't have their own aircraft carriers for defense?

If Chinese aircraft carriers are not for defense, why should U.S. aircraft carriers classified as "defensive?" Aren't they inherently aggressive vessels, used only for war crimes? Including the current war crimes in Afghanistan?

If Panetta and the corporate security state he so proudly serves had half a brain left, they would negotiate a global treaty to decommission all aircraft carriers. Then China would not need to build new ones. Then the U.S. might have some money for schools or to invest capital to create jobs. Or to pay off those bonds that Standard & Poor's and others have suggested are less than sterling investments.

See also: history of the aircraft carrier

Save America, Sell Alaska

The United States of America is more deeply in debt than any nation in the world. The national debt, which is really just government debt, is about $13.6 trillion.

For practical purposes Americans became the world's aristocrats after World War II, when the factories of every other nation had been bombed to smithereens. We had it all. Some of us had more of all of it than others of us, but I'll leave that issue aside today.

Like aristocrats we began to feel the lifestyle we had once earned by military conquest was our right, even if we did not work very hard or invest very wisely. In the 1960s we started running up debts, and then we just kept running them up.

2010 now: Surprise! Everyone has factories, even nations that had none before World War II. Only Iraq and Afghanistan have been bombed back to the stone age. Americans have no special economic advantage in the world. But we still want to spend like we used to back in the good old days. So we spent the first few years of the new century borrowing money and spending it.

Some people say we should get back to thrift and hard work, we should earn our place in the world again. But we are Number 1! We are the world's aristocracy! We have other options. Like the old landed aristocracy, we can start selling off what we bought and developed when we were kings.

That already happened a little bit in the late 1980's, when we sold off some real estate at very, very good prices to the Japanese, who lived to regret most of their American purchases. Now, however, it is not just a matter of myriad personal debts. Our government owes $13.6 trillion dollars, and much more if you count future obligations. Selling a golf course or two won't solve this problem.

We have to think big, and much as I would like it, I don't think we'd be able to sell Texas or even California.

But we could sell Alaska. Not very many people live in it, less than a million, or about 1 per square mile, so few that if all of them want to emigrate to the 49 real states it would not be a problem. We would be selling a lot of acres, 663,268 square miles worth of them. At 640 acres per square mile, that is ... um ... where's that calculator? What does 4.245 with a raised 8 mean? Oh, 424,500,000 acres. Nowhere near trillion acres, well south of half a billion.

I think China, Russia, and Japan would all be willing buyers, maybe even Canada. We could get a bidding war going.

Alaska was known as Seward's Folly when we bought it from the Russians for just $7.2 million in 1867. What a great investment. I think we could easily sell it for $500 billion to a trillion dollars.

That money could be used to pay down the national debt, but people will want to use it for other stuff, I suppose. Rich Americans will want ever lower tax rates. The Pentagon will want to fight Iran or Venezuela. Welfare bums will want more bum. Whiny working class kids who want a college degree so they can become middle class will want more state-subsidized tuition. Socialists will want the money to be used by the government to buy up the healthcare system.

But if we could resist such spendthrift impulses, and we did get a cool trillion dollars from the Chinese (let's guess they would be the high bidder), we could pay down the national debt to only $12.6 trillion.

Wouldn't that be great? Then again, maybe we should hold out for $1000 per acre. That would get us $4.2 trillion. For that price maybe we could throw in Puerto Rico, which isn't even a state.

Be sure to forward this essay to your friends, or a great idea for saving America will be lost among all the stupid ideas for saving America written by other bloggers.

Afghanistan War and American Politics

The economic, military, and political stupidity of the United States of America's war against Afghanistan, and "War Against Terror," has been noted by an increasing number of American citizens over the last decade. The war makes sense only to the military-industrial complex. Watching President Barack Obama addressing disabled veterans on Friday, I saw the new mask of brutal Americanism. It is a smooth talking mask, crucial to keeping enough liberal voters in the war camp to keep the dollars flowing to the aggression industries.

Having dissected the real nature of the Taliban and the politics of Afghanistan on many occasions, here I want to focus on how the system is "fixed" [as in a crooked gambling game]. Most people remember that most Obama voters thought they were voting to get the U.S.A. out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Was Obama lying from the start, or did he really change his policy once he became President?

Now, of course, Obama claims that he never promised to withdraw from the war on terror. He offered "hope" and "change." It is like game of blackjack in a casino. The house always wins, but a new shuffle or pack of cards always offers hope to the chronically deluded gambler.

Barack Obama was a very confident man long before he became President. It is conceivable that during the campaign he imagined he could finesse his way out of Afghanistan. After all, the success of President Bush's surge strategy in Iraq, and the clear sentiment of a majority of Americans that we do not need to wage a large scale war to deal with the few dozen dingbats who actually are in Al-Qaeda, seemed to provide a lot of leverage against the national security establishment. Obama knew better than most Americans that Presidents don't make the laws, or even foreign policy: they only enforce them. But he probably thought that he would have the cooperation of the Democratic Party members of Congress. He may have even thought the Republican Party would be happy if the issue went away, and any blowback, like successful terrorist acts in the U.S., could be blamed on the Democrats.

But probably he knew how Washington D.C. really works: some policies can change with changes of the popular will, but most change comes only with the permission of, and when it is to the benefit of, a set of power brokers. The military-industrial complex, with its secretive national security, black-ops adjuncts, knows all the tricks of power. The election of Barack Obama did not diminish its power one inch.

Recall that during the electin the nation was in a deep economic crisis, caused primarily by the Bush tax cuts for the rich and the incompetence of the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. This made it possible for small groups of Senators and Representatives to hold the nation hostage to their special interests.

One of those small, but certainly not tiny, groups were the committee and subcommittee chairs who were (and are) in the pockets of the security establishment or the military contractor corporations. Progressive Democrat like to assume that these men and women are mostly Republicans, but the group has been dominated by Democrats ever since President Franklin Roosevelt began the largest military buildup in American history in the late 1930's with the objective of conquering Japan. In the Senate this included Joseph Lieberman chairing the Homeland Security Committee, Carl Levin chairing Armed Forces, and Diane Feinstein chairing Intelligence. Levin, Feinstein, and Liberman have always favored U.S. funded aggression against Palestinians and other Moslems. All are Jewish. Levin is also chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Homeland Security.

In the House of Representatives, on the all-important Appropriations committee the Defense subcommittee is chaired by Norman D. Dicks, while the Homeland Security subcommittee is chaired by David E. Price. The Armed Services Committee is chaired by Ike Skelton; its Terrorism subcommittee is chaired by Loretta Sanchez. The Foreign Affairs Committee chair is Howard L. Berman. Committee on Homeland Security chair is Bennie G. Thompson. Its subcommitte chairs are Jane Harman for Intelligence, Sheila Jackson Lee for Transportation Security, Henry Cuellar for Border and Maritime, Christopher Carney for Investigations, Yvette Clarke for Cyber & Science, and Laura Richardson for Emergency Communications. The Judiciary Committee also has a Terrorism subcommittee chaired by Robert C. Scott.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is chaired by Sivestre Reyes. Its numerous subcommitteees are headed by Mike Thompson, Anna Eshoo, Dutch Ruppersberger, and Janice Schakowsky.

Traditionally almost ever congressional district was given some sort of military base or factory with a defense contract, giving the military the ability to put pressure broadly on Congress. Thus the servants become the masters, while preserving the illusion of civilian control of the military.

Barack Obama was an Illinois State Senator representing the 13th District, basically Chicago's South Side, from 1996 to 2004 [he ran unopposed in the Democratic primary because he successfully challenged the nomition petitions of 4 other candidates]. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004 and served their from 2005 until 2008. Chicago and Illinois are bloated with defense contracting industries, including the corporate offices of the world's largest defense contractor, Boeing. Obama would have worked closely with his state's defense contractors while holding his U.S. Senate seat.

To get anything done after becoming President, given that he was unlikely to pick up Republican votes in Congress, Barack Obama needed a Democratic Party that was 100% behind his program. Even one defecting vote in the Senate could derail any agenda item, as we have seen several times. But with important Democrats demanding the continued expansion of homeland security and Pentagon spending in their districts, Obama folded almost immediately. He took credit that was due to George Bush for winding down the war in Iraq, but bought into transferring troops and budgets to the Afghan war. Exaggerating the power of Al Qaeda and vilifying the Taliban became necessary to provide political cover for Obama's lack of balls. The problem is that if Obama had the balls to take on the Pentagon, they would have made his domestic agenda impossible.

No one person, not even a President, can change the system. Many Presidents have tried to put the Pentagon on a modest diet, only to find Congress injecting all the pork they can think of into the budget.

It is a little house of horrors scenario. At some point the Pentagon, CIA and homeland security will eat every living thing in America. Then the have two choices: eat up other nations in a more openly imperialistic manner, or collapse with the rest of the American economy.

Afghanistan Justified by Mineral Wealth

There's over a Trillion Dollars worth of minerals to be mined in Afghanistan, according to Pentagon geologists. I did not previously know the Pentagon was in the mining business. Or that they employed prospectors and geologists.

The United States occupied Afghanistan in 2002, overthrowing the Taliban-led government. Someone had to be punished for the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. The attack was carried out by Saudi Arabian citizens, financed by Saudi money. But American (and British) companies already had a highly profitable business buying Saudi oil. The dictatorial, woman-oppressing, fanatically religious Islamic government of Saudi Arabia claimed it was loyal to America and the oil kept flowing. Ideally the Pentagon needed a weak country to beat up on. The Afghani government refused to expedite Osama Bin Laden. Not extraditing criminals (or spiritual leaders of rebels) has never been an act of war in the past, but the Pentagon, backed by President Bush, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party, invaded Afghanistan anyway.

Who knew there was a trillion dollars worth of minerals to be extracted. International mining corporations just got lucky. Including lithium for iPhones and iPads. Even a great prophet like Steve Jobs couldn't have foreseen something like that. [Oh no. Now I'll get thousands of e-mails claiming Steve Jobs can foresee anything he he wants to see, and how dare I write my prose on anything but an iPad.]

It is a hard call without further research. They want us to believe that geologists never visited Afghanistan before 2002. Prospectors either; it never occurred to that hardy lot that there might be gold in the hills or deserts. I believe a lot of private information was known about Afghanistan mineral potential going back decades. It is just that no one put it into a public report until now.

Think of all that money! It cuts down on our (Western) reliance on China for rare earth elements too. It justifies the deaths of not just American gunmen, but of Taliban soldiers and uncounted civilians.

And what is super, super groovy for the Pentagon and allied industrialists is that there are no environmental regulations in Afghanistan. No safety regulations either. As far as they are concerned, it would be like mining the moon. No harm done. Bring in the dynamite and humongous mining machines. A regular boy-child utopia.

If the past is any guide to the future, if wealth is extracted in the form of minerals, only a few Afghans will benefit. The miners will come and go, they and a few officials will get rich, and in a century or so there will be just a scared land and a bunch of poor sheep herders and opium croppers.

Give the Iraq Money Back

Billions were stolen by the Bush administration and friends - and now we aren't talking contracts for Halliburton or a few federal dollars for church-based proselytizing. In Billions Over Baghdad former Time reporters Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele tell the story of how money that had been seized from Iraq was given away to well-connected corrupt friends of the Pentagon and CIA.

Oh, it is not the first time in American history. As early as the Revolutionary War money that was supposed to go for one thing went into dishonest men's pockets. In every war since then taxpayer money has disappeared or been traded for shoddy or even phony goods. Harry Truman documented the wasteful spending just before the U.S. entered World War II.

But in this case it was not American taxpayer money that was grabbed. It was Iraqi money. Taking the money was an act of genocide. I don't trust the Democrats to investigate, because though they might like to make the Republicans look bad, they have a long history of corruption themselves and are probably just mad the money ended up in the other guy's pockets.

Maybe a special prosecutor could do the job, given enough resources. But again, this isn't ordinary stealing, this is the moral equivalent of genocide. So I think the best institution for conducting the investigation could be the World Court.

Better still, let's really go for justice this time. Let's empower a group of Iraqi clerics noted for their incorruptible nature to investigate and determine punishment. While I am against the death penalty as a matter of general principle, I think beheading would not be inappropriate for anyone who dipped into the Iraqi cash fund or looked the other way while it was happening.

So we would lose much of the senior Bush administration, campaign donors, Pentagon contract boys and CIA we-can't-buy-heroin-without-front-money spooks. I guarantee you that if this is pursued far enough, the Republican Party and probably the Democrats too will collapse like the House of Usher. Apparently the Federal Reserve was originally in charge of the money; how safe is the rest of our money system?

Okay, enough said. Let's end the war and start behaving like a civilized race. Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.