[GPSCC-chat] declining empire

[Jim Doyle]

Here are some excerpts from an article that was first posted on
July 30, 2009   and reposted yesterday, Sunday, August 7-th 2011at
*http://tinyurl.com/4y87t5v*

Shortly after his election as president, Barack Obama, in a speech 
announcing
several members of his new cabinet, stated as fact 
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/3540167/Barack-Obama-says-US-will-maintain-strongest-military-on-planet-as-Clinton-confirmed-top-diplomat.html> 
that "[w]e have to maintain
the strongest military on the planet."

A few weeks later, on March 12, 2009, in a speech at the National Defense
University in Washington D.C., the president again insisted 
<http://www.emailthepresident.com/news/2009/03-12-obama-says-us-military-will-change-but-remain-worlds-strongest.html>, 
"Now make no
mistake, this nation will maintain our military dominance.
We will have the strongest armed forces in the history of the world."

And in a commencement address to the cadets of the U.S. Naval Academy
on May 22nd, Obama stressed 
<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22869.html> that "[w]e will 
maintain America's military
dominance and keep you the finest fighting force the world has ever seen."
----------

Our unwillingness to retrench, no less liquidate, represents a striking 
historical
failure of the imagination. In his first official visit to China since 
becoming
Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner assured an audience of students at
Beijing University, "Chinese assets [invested in the United States] are 
very safe."
According to press reports 
<http://wonderlandwire.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/audience-laughs-after-geithner-tells-china-its-dollar-assets-are-safe/>, 
the students responded with loud laughter. Well they might.
---------

The budget deficit (2009)  represents about 13% of our current gross 
domestic
product (that is, the value of everything we produce). It is worth 
noting that the
target demanded 
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=aKOzWiTDseUE&pid=20601039> of 
European nations wanting to join the Euro Zone is a deficit
no greater than 3% of GDP.
---------

The Pakistani army and its intelligence arm are staffed, in part, by 
devout Muslims
who fostered the Taliban in Afghanistan to meet the needs of their own 
agenda,
though not necessarily to advance an Islamic /jihad/.

Their purposes have always included: keeping Afghanistan free of Russian 
or Indian
influence, providing a training and recruiting ground for /mujahideen/ 
guerrillas to be
used in places like Kashmir (fought over by both Pakistan and India),
containing Islamic radicalism in Afghanistan (and so keeping it out of 
Pakistan),
and extorting huge amounts of money from Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf 
emirates,
and the United States to pay and train "freedom fighters" throughout the 
Islamic world.

Pakistan's consistent policy has been to support the clandestine 
policies of the
Inter-Services Intelligence and thwart the influence of its major enemy and
competitor, India.
----------

Colonel Douglas MacGregor, U.S. Army (retired), an adviser to the Center 
for
Defense Information in Washington, summarizes 
<http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4106190&c=FEA&s=COM> our 
hopeless project in South
Asia this way: "Nothing we do will compel 125 million Muslims in 
Pakistan to
make common cause with a United States in league with the two states 
that are
unambiguously anti-Muslim: Israel and India."
-------------