Thug Life

It occurs to me that our nation is a bit schizophrenic. We want cheap stuff. We want WallyWorld to sell us all sorts of merchandise made in various “emerging” countries. We want our military/diplomatic corps to ensure that the supply line of cheap stuff stays open. The most important ingredient to having cheap stuff is cheap oil. Of course it was not always cheap oil, read GEN (R) Smedley Butler here to find out what we have been wrangling about the world to get cheap since 1898.

So we want cheap stuff, but to get cheap stuff you have to buy cheap resources or have cheap resources available to those that manufacture the stuff for you. Throughout the 20th and into the 21st century we have been ensuring the access to cheap resources by mucking around in others business. Other empires that did this were fairly honest with themselves that this mucking was self-interested and so they did not really apologize for it. We seem to feel that we must apologize for our self-interest; the latest exhibit was the Obama Penance Tour conducted around the world. This is akin to saying your sorry to some guy whose teeth you just kicked in. Most folks the world over don’t buy it.

But we do even worse than just apologize. We are so remorseful that we feel that we must do surgery on the guy’s teeth to try to make him all better. Not because we actually care for him, but because it makes us think more highly of ourselves. Of course we are not much for dentistry, so we do a horrible job, and it hurts our victim even more than if we had just left him with his broken teeth. I think that I have taken this analogy about as far as it can go; so putting the bottom line in the middle, I wish we would decide if we want to be an empire. If we do want to be an empire, and it seems that we do, then lets have done with all of the mercy and get thuggish.

President Obama is preparing to expand our nation building in Afghanistan. There is nothing to be had in Afghanistan but a bit of self-righteousness. The “country” was a shambles when we got there. It was ruled by a gang of lunatics that dearly needed to be treated to the working end of a tire iron. We are very effective at that sort of thing. Having administered the appropriate beat down, we should have left. By doing so, we would have shown the Taliban that they need to find other outlets for their frustration than targeting US interests with their terrorist buddies. As it is, we have tried to rebuild the country and in the process managed to empower the Taliban to the point that they are now a significant threat to Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. Now we are going to try the strategy that seems to have worked in Iraq in the short term. The Obama administration has borrowed every play from George Bush’s play book from the time they got into office; so why not a surge? It seems that the Democrats are really Republicans with a healthy dose of guilt.

The point is that if you are going to run an empire, you must do it the old fashioned way. Fear is what motivates other countries to give up their stuff at less than market price so that we can have cheap stuff. Fear is what drives the capitulator. To run an empire, you have to raze Carthage and Jerusalem to the ground. You have to make it so that all others capitulate when you politely ask them to because they are scared.

We want to be an empire of love. There is no such thing. No one ever loves you when you come and require them to give up their stuff so that you can have a new flat screen TV. Even if you have a great propaganda machine that tells them that you are helping them; they only see you stealing their stuff and trying to foist your “way” upon them.

This schizophrenic strategy of helping those that we take from is doomed to failure. The US empire will fall unless we look ourselves in the mirror and decide that we are going to act like what we are. We are an empire, so we ought to act like one or give up the game altogether. I am all for giving up the game, but that is not realistic given the insatiable thirst for power that attends central governments. So let us stop this double mindedness and get our thug life on. At least we would have a chance at being successful.