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Ongoing Thoughts 21:
By William E. Steinman:
August 11, 2008:
Other Issues:
A friend reminded me that there were two
issues I had ignored in my essays on being God Emperor. He said I had
not dealt with the immigration problem or the war on terrorism. He considered
those to be more important than what I had discussed
and I should have taken them first. While I do not agree that either of those
issues is more important than our energy crisis, I do agree, I ought to discuss
them. That is what this piece is about.
I have considered the immigration problem and have come to
realize we cannot resolve it with any kind of law enforcement or force of any
kind even if the Mexican government were to cooperate. Those people are
desperate, as is indicated by their willingness to accept employment in truly
ugly conditions in America.
They can get no work of any kind at home so they come here. They will continue
to do so regardless of our efforts to stop them.
Given the situation, the solution is obvious to anyone with
a mind. The least expensive and best way to solve the immigration problem would
be to create jobs in Mexico
that would pay as well or better than the farm slave labor and
domestic servant jobs they
generally get here. I am sure the people who come here for work would rather
stay home if they could get decent pay. They come here because they cannot get
work at home. They would prefer to be with their extended family rather than
alone in a hostile country. To most Mexicans, family is everything. That is true
of most foreign peoples. It is only in America
where that is often not true and the concept of extended family has lost most
of its meaning.
The NAFTA agreement might have helped in that effort, but it
has only served to aggravate the worker situation here. It did create a few
jobs in Mexico,
but it took away even more jobs from America.
The only companies that are moving their jobs to Mexico
are the ones who are reneging on their agreements with the American workers. In
the meantime, there has been very little improvement in the Mexican economy.
The American managers treat the Mexican workers almost as meanly as the Mexican
managers do. There is even less trickle down effect in their economy than there
is here. The Mexican government is even worse than America’s
government. I still believe creating jobs in Mexico
is the best solution, but the rulers there have to be convinced it is better
for them as well as for the peons. Since their government is probably even
stupider than ours, that will be the most difficult task.
Beyond that, I think the biggest roadblock to solving this
problem is the built in resistance to taking these laborers away from the
American economy. Many industries are totally dependant upon these semi-slaves.
I doubt if the garment industry could exist at all without them. And the cost of our food would increase enormously if the
farm cartel had to pay real wages to their workers. So,
in order to solve this problem, I would need to be God Emperor in Mexico
as well as here. Then I could force it to work.
As to the war on terrorism, that is a much-overused phrase.
If we are going to make war on terrorism, we should first agree on what
terrorism is and who the terrorists are. It is very
clear that our current government cannot distinguish between terrorists and
tinhorn fascists. If they could, we would never have wasted so many lives and
resources in Iraq.
A lot of good people died as a result of this
misunderstanding. We would never have invaded Iraq
and Afghanistan
would be secured. There would be no Taliban. That
first attack occurred in 2001. We had seven years to nail down the Taliban and
create a stable situation in Afghanistan
and we have not done it.
To solve this problem, we will need to get our troops out of
Iraq, the
sooner the better. That government has had more than enough time to get their
house in order. We created a horrible problem for the Iraqis, but we have done
all we can to solve it. The rest must be up to them. We must tell them we are
getting out, then do it. They must decide if they want
their homeland back or if they want to give it over to Al Sadr,
or another Hussein. If I were God Emperor, I would tell them we are pulling
out, then I would do it.
We should now concentrate our efforts on the Taliban and
Al-Qaeda. The best places to do that are in Afghanistan
and Pakistan.
We have let that situation get so far out of hand that I am convinced we will
need a bigger and better equipped army to bring it
under control. Out current troops, including our national guard have been so
overextended they are exhausted. On top of that, we are not getting enough
volunteers and the ones we are getting are often not bright enough to be modern
soldiers.
We will need a draft to build up a real army. Call me all of the names you would like,
but that is still the truth we will have to face. We cannot fight a war without
fighters. The alternative is to gradually lose our country to those Muslim madmen. To prevent that, we must have enough fighters to
sweep this huge rugged area and drive those pigs out of their holes where we
can kill them just as we did in the Pacific against Japan.
The bigger and more powerful our army is the less of our troops will be killed in that effort. If I were God Emperor, I
would make building and army and properly equipping it
a top priority.
About Pakistan,
we need to get that country under the control of rational people if we can. If
not we will have to take control ourselves. There is a great deal more
justification for invading Pakistan
than there ever was for invading Iraq.
In Pakistan
we know there are mad Muslim killers hiding in the hills. To deal with them, we
must have military control there.
One thing that would go a long way toward disabling the
terrorist organizations would be the solution to the energy crisis that I
proposed in “Ongoing Thoughts 18.” We ought to get clear on the
fact that we are actually financing those madmen when
we buy oil from them. If we had another real source of plentiful cheap energy,
they would eventually drown in their own oil. I would love to see that. That is
just another reason for making energy the top priority.
Iran
is a clear and present danger to the stability of that region. We must find a
way to neutralize that threat. I doubt if we can do that by chatting with them,
but chatting could help us get a handle on how best to deal with them. What
that nut says for public consumption is sure to be entirely different from what
he says in a closed meeting. Only be hearing that can we properly evaluate the
situation. As Winston Churchill once said, “Better
talk, talk, talk than fight, fight, and fight.”
Finally, we must decide who our allies are and who they are
not. The Saudis are Muslims and never will be our allies. They want to see us
destroyed just as do all the other Muslims. They are simply not as proactive
about it, but we must know that much of the terrorist financing comes from
Saudi Arabian oil. We have no allies in the Middle East.
All of those countries will continue to pursue what they see as their own best
interests. Their best interests are not at all compatible with our American
concepts of Democracy. We ought to get clear on that.
I’m sure it is possible to
deal with these madmen, but we must understand the true cost and make the
investment. We will not manage this with nickel-dime, dinking and dunking
methods. We must go full out, just as we did in WWII.
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