With one and a half years left in the war against Germany, Winston Churchill remarked to Harold MacMillan, “Germany is finished, though it may take some time to clean up the mess. The real problem is Russia.” To hijack the great man’s formulation: Afghanistan and Iraq are finished, though it is taking some time to clean up the mess, and the problems now are Iran and Syria.
The thinking on which the Afghan and Iraq Wars was based was never, “Afghanistan, then Iraq, then stop.” It entailed kicking the Syrian Ba’athist regime of Bashar al-Assad out of Lebanon, then out of Syria itself, finally confronting the Libyan regime that founded state-sponsored Islamic terrorism, and somehow undoing the Iranian theocracy that gave radical Islam its own state and armed forces, with North Korea as a troublesome sideshow to be contained and prevented from becoming the arsenal of Islamic terrorism.
Syria did for the most part leave Lebanon after the “Cedar Revolution” uprising of the Lebanese people, following the first Iraqi elections in the winter of 2005. Libya reformed itself -- or made a start toward reforming itself – a year earlier, after Libyan dictator Mohammar Gadhaffi saw Saddam Hussein pulled by U.S. forces from a dirt hole. But that still left Syria and Iran.
There was hope that toppling the first one or two dominoes might render further military action unnecessary, as the people of other Mid Eastern nations followed Afghans and Iraqis in building the sort of free societies unlikely to cause us harm. But that has gone only as far as Libya and Lebanon, plus some half-steps in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.
The thinking was that the West had no hope of a secure future unless the entire Mid East was overhauled, “1945-style.” Like fighting a mosquito plague by draining the swamp they breed in, rather than just swatting at the things when they buzz past our ears. It was wildly ambitious, and it seemed for some time that the practical application of it could go only to “Step Two”: Iraq.
And maybe Iraq is where the Western drive to reform the region will end. But one wonders if, in view of the flaunting provocation of recent remarks and actions, the new Iran-Syria Axis might ultimately provoke a Western counterstrike that would have the effect of continuing the mission left off after Iraq.
This war is not ready for the history books yet.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia, and Tulsa, Oklahoma
July 22, 2006
July 3, 2006
America's Economic Miracle
On April 3, 2000, the judge in the Microsoft anti-trust case ruled against the goose that laid the golden egg and in favor of breaking it up, Microsoft shares lost $80 billion U.S., and the NASDAQ fell 349 points. The ridiculously over-inflated technology stock bubble on which the late-1990s economic boom was built, had popped. By the end of the year, over half the NASDAQ’s former value had vanished.
Nine months later came the worst-ever attack on American soil, targeting America’s civilians, commerce, and government. One million Americans were out of work within just three months.
A few months and one war after that, corporate accounting scandals rattled already-shaken investor confidence. And all the while, America’s illegal alien population was swelling by 40 percent to 12 million, straining public services and cramming employment rolls.
Another war followed, along with all the stock market uncertainty and national strain that entails, and this was a war that would refuse to be dispatched conveniently.
Then the price of gas exploded, heaping yet another wet blanket on economic activity and increasing inflationary pressure. And as oil spiraled upward last fall, America was bombarded by the worst hurricane season in living memory. One of America’s major cities was practically washed away, and an entire region was shut down to varying degrees for months, a region that also happened to be central to America’s oil production, refining, and importing.
And yet here we are, after America has been besieged on all sides for over six years, with a 4.6 percent unemployment rate that is better even than the 5.7 percent average for the “booming” 1990s; 11 consecutive quarters of GDP growth; per capita disposable income higher by 8 percent -- $2,500 U.S. -- than before 9/11; the biggest boom in new home construction since the 19th Century; and the richest Treasury haul in American history, now measured in multiple trillions.
In under three years, the U.S. economy has created more jobs – 5.3 million -- than there are people in Finland.
The entire economic output of Sweden, Switzerland, and Ireland together is equal to only the growth in America’s GDP last year of $674 billion U.S.
This is not to say that the economic mood is nearly so buoyant. A recent Gallup poll found a dismal 24 percent of respondents viewing the economy positively. High gas prices presumably depress economic optimism, discontent over Iraq or illegal aliens, etc. may be a drag on public perceptions across the board, and partisan acrimony could make it difficult for a good portion of the population to acknowledge national success, economic and otherwise.
And then there is the news. Most American news outfits seem to treat good economic news like national secrets, while blabbing actual national secrets in their top stories. Over 21 days in April and May, the three traditional television networks ran 183 news stories on the high gas price, to only four on the low unemployment rate, and two on the growth in GDP.
Despite the unusually low unemployment and indefatigable GDP growth, etc., the American people remain discouraged about their economy. But they keep to the grindstone, producing, innovating, creating, and working an economic miracle.
There are in fact things to be discouraged about.
Oil-driven inflation has been threatening to pinch economic activity and necessitate more interest rate hikes, which drains cash from stocks and deters potential borrowers for big-ticket purchases like new homes.
Wage growth has been lagging behind growth in jobs, particularly as higher unemployment had made workers cheaper. But as unemployed Americans become rare, wages are responding, increasing by 3.8 percent from a year ago.
America’s unfathomably expensive federal budget – now $2.57 trillion U.S. – is in deficit, running to -$412 billion U.S. last year. Congress and the President have spent like drunken sailors, increasing even non-defense “discretionary” expenditure by a dizzying 49 percent since 2001. Still, U.S. debt as a percentage of GDP is lower today than it was in the balanced-budget 1990s, and the deficit is now projected to decline by 27 percent this year, as the rising economy generates a tidal wave of tax revenue. Anyway, since when have wartime budgets been in the black?
And the United States imports more than it exports, by $726 billion U.S. in 2005. But with far and away the largest domestic market on earth, America is not export-dependent. America’s economy is built on the American consumer; exports are only the icing on the cake.
With exports making up 40 percent of Canada’s economy, and 85 percent of those going to the United States, at least a third of our prosperity stems directly from America’s. We would all be much worse off if America did not produce so very much wealth, and thankfully it seems America can make money even with the world crashing down around it.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Nine months later came the worst-ever attack on American soil, targeting America’s civilians, commerce, and government. One million Americans were out of work within just three months.
A few months and one war after that, corporate accounting scandals rattled already-shaken investor confidence. And all the while, America’s illegal alien population was swelling by 40 percent to 12 million, straining public services and cramming employment rolls.
Another war followed, along with all the stock market uncertainty and national strain that entails, and this was a war that would refuse to be dispatched conveniently.
Then the price of gas exploded, heaping yet another wet blanket on economic activity and increasing inflationary pressure. And as oil spiraled upward last fall, America was bombarded by the worst hurricane season in living memory. One of America’s major cities was practically washed away, and an entire region was shut down to varying degrees for months, a region that also happened to be central to America’s oil production, refining, and importing.
And yet here we are, after America has been besieged on all sides for over six years, with a 4.6 percent unemployment rate that is better even than the 5.7 percent average for the “booming” 1990s; 11 consecutive quarters of GDP growth; per capita disposable income higher by 8 percent -- $2,500 U.S. -- than before 9/11; the biggest boom in new home construction since the 19th Century; and the richest Treasury haul in American history, now measured in multiple trillions.
In under three years, the U.S. economy has created more jobs – 5.3 million -- than there are people in Finland.
The entire economic output of Sweden, Switzerland, and Ireland together is equal to only the growth in America’s GDP last year of $674 billion U.S.
This is not to say that the economic mood is nearly so buoyant. A recent Gallup poll found a dismal 24 percent of respondents viewing the economy positively. High gas prices presumably depress economic optimism, discontent over Iraq or illegal aliens, etc. may be a drag on public perceptions across the board, and partisan acrimony could make it difficult for a good portion of the population to acknowledge national success, economic and otherwise.
And then there is the news. Most American news outfits seem to treat good economic news like national secrets, while blabbing actual national secrets in their top stories. Over 21 days in April and May, the three traditional television networks ran 183 news stories on the high gas price, to only four on the low unemployment rate, and two on the growth in GDP.
Despite the unusually low unemployment and indefatigable GDP growth, etc., the American people remain discouraged about their economy. But they keep to the grindstone, producing, innovating, creating, and working an economic miracle.
There are in fact things to be discouraged about.
Oil-driven inflation has been threatening to pinch economic activity and necessitate more interest rate hikes, which drains cash from stocks and deters potential borrowers for big-ticket purchases like new homes.
Wage growth has been lagging behind growth in jobs, particularly as higher unemployment had made workers cheaper. But as unemployed Americans become rare, wages are responding, increasing by 3.8 percent from a year ago.
America’s unfathomably expensive federal budget – now $2.57 trillion U.S. – is in deficit, running to -$412 billion U.S. last year. Congress and the President have spent like drunken sailors, increasing even non-defense “discretionary” expenditure by a dizzying 49 percent since 2001. Still, U.S. debt as a percentage of GDP is lower today than it was in the balanced-budget 1990s, and the deficit is now projected to decline by 27 percent this year, as the rising economy generates a tidal wave of tax revenue. Anyway, since when have wartime budgets been in the black?
And the United States imports more than it exports, by $726 billion U.S. in 2005. But with far and away the largest domestic market on earth, America is not export-dependent. America’s economy is built on the American consumer; exports are only the icing on the cake.
With exports making up 40 percent of Canada’s economy, and 85 percent of those going to the United States, at least a third of our prosperity stems directly from America’s. We would all be much worse off if America did not produce so very much wealth, and thankfully it seems America can make money even with the world crashing down around it.
Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
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