Monday, May 30, 2011

IS OSAMA WINNING?

I would not say that dead Osama bin Laden is winning, but his strategy is having a huge impact on the good old USA. Osama, you remember, set out to bring down America, like he thought he had the Soviet Union.

Now we have the fallout from our own greedy financiers in the banks and on Wall Street, who knowingly sold millions of high-risk mortgage loans to people who couldn't pay them back, and then bundled those lousy mortgages into securities and sold them to suckers around the world. Then they sat back and laughed as they got rich and the world's financial systems crumbled.

We, the good old USA, bailed out Wall Street and the banks, so our financial system wouldn't collapse. And at the same time, we created a huge infrastructure in which thousands of people have security clearances and we are spending billions of dollars we don't have on "defense" we don't need.

This is from AlterNet:

"...We have spent $7.6 trillion on the military and homeland security since 9/11. The Pentagon's base budget – which doesn't include the costs of fighting our wars – has increased by 81 percent during that time (43 percent when adjusted for inflation). The costs of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have now reached $1.26 trillion. But that only scratches the surface; it doesn't include the long-term costs of caring for badly wounded soldiers, for example."

These are mind-boggling amounts of money. We are "defending" ourselves to death, from an enemy that uses box cutters and packs explosives into computer printers and people's underwear. They spend dimes while we spend millions.

We are Goliath and our enemy is David. Do you remember who won that fight? Who do you think will win this time, if we don't wise up?

How stupid can we get? We are lumbering around like a massive idiot, bankrupting ourselves out of fear.

I wouldn't say Osama is winning, but his strategy is sure getting ahead. We seem to be helping him, inadvertently, but helping him nonetheless.

Even in death, he is smarter than we are.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

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