If you want to know
how comical the editors of the Wall Street Journal can be at times, read the
latest piece they published on May 22, 2015 under the title: “I Don't Think
We're Losing” and the subtitle: “President Obama sees light at the end of the
ISIS tunnel.”
You must be warned,
however, that as you laugh, you may also get teary eyed because what you'll
encounter is not just a comedy but a tragicomedy where the tragic component is
as real as the comical component. It is the situation that America has been
living for a number of decades now … from the time when the voice of the
Neocons started to rise above all other voices to become the deciding factor in
the conduct of America's foreign policy – and by implication domestic matters
as well.
In fact, even though
the Neocons have lately been cut to size, their insidious influence can still
be felt in most aspects of American life. Among these, the new economics of the
“Far Right” where these people argue – in their own insidious manner – that the
best way to make America a wealthy nation again is to starve its workers,
forcing them to work harder and harder thus produce more and more if they want
to eat and feed their families. You will come to realize that this approach to
economics represents nothing less than the use of the stick (or the whip) in
the conduct of domestic affairs.
That image will come
to mind when you read the following passage in the Journal's latest editorial:
“At least Mr. Bush
ordered a change of strategy that left Iraq stable by the time Mr. Obama
took office. On present trend Mr. Obama will leave his successor an Iraq in turmoil
and a mini-caliphate entrenched across hundreds of miles. If this isn't
'losing,' how does the President define victory?”
Those who know the
history of that colossal mistake know that to make Iraq look like it had been
stabilized by the time George W. Bush left office, his administration borrowed
like crazy from domestic and foreign lenders, and used the money (among other
things) to bribe the Iraqi Sunni tribes of the Anbar province into keeping
their followers quiet till at least the new administration had taken office.
What was happening
in the meantime is that something was brewing on the American domestic front
while the Iraqis were munching on the carrot just handed to them. It is that
all the borrowing that was done had caused the financial system to collapse in
slow motion till it finally came down in a thud. It triggered a near depression
in America
at the time that W. Bush was leaving office, thus handing to Obama, the new
President a miserable Neoconish mess.
The net result has
been the painting of a new American portrait under the management of the new
conservative Neocons handing out carrots abroad in the form of monetary bribes
and military aid, thus eroding the American economy and leading to the
inevitable suggestion that the American workers at home be starved and whipped
like slaves on a Roman ship that is out at sea looking for foreign lands to conquer,
and new provinces to add to a crumbling empire. And they named that portrait
Pax Americana.
By the time that the
American economy had been stabilized – a feat that was achieved by ending the
bleeding, which was the only tool available to the new President – Iraq had
become the mess that the Neocon invasion had fated for it. And in the same
“Cool Hand Luke” manner that Mr. Obama managed to stabilize the American
economy, he is now seeking to stabilize the Middle East .
This is what the
Neocons are huffing and puffing about, something they do every time that they
decide to repeat the successes they had in the past. That was the time when
they were able to con America 's
public and its politicians into believing they possessed the secret that can
make the empire live long and prosper – to borrow a saying from the fictitious
Vulcan Civilization.