Harry Pollard wrote:
[snip]
> So, a dozen or so terrorists in dying racked up an enormous bill for
> the US - and I'm not counting the immediate and horrible costs faced
> by New Yorkers.
>
> The "Defence" costs are to be piled on top of everything else. Have
> Congress cut the pork to give room for these additional costs. Of
> course not. All the other good things we simply must have - have they
> been cut back? Not really. Where picayune cuts have been made (mostly
> affecting and hurting individuals) they have been balanced by
> enormous increases elsewhere.
>
> The trouble is we are not so rich and powerful as we might think.
[snip]
I have always thought that a dollar is not a dollar. I learned
this when I worked in an art museum and saw the fine art
one curator had in his apartment and which he bought
on a salary less than my father (a house paint sales manager...)
earned. No way did my father live in such luxury! What was
the difference? The curator KNEW A LOT. The curator had the
"multiplier".
Osama bin Laden has the multiplier. He knows how to
make a dollar buy a lot.
"We" do not have the multiplier. The United States cannot
afford to defend itself.
The American military is not all ossifocrats (people who
turn everything to stone). The late Colonel John R. Boyd
(USAF Ret.) was recognized on both sides of the Iron Curtain
as a master military theorist. His mentor was Sun-Tzu.
Boyd urged that the most important military factor
was having insight into what's happening.
--
I look back at my parents and the schools I went to and
I wonder how people could have been so naive so
short a time ago (the 1950s). For just one example: I was amazed how
these people reproduced their species when they had not yet
even discovered sex. America is a negative miracle.
--
How could "we" have let Pearl Harbor happen? How could
"we" have let "911" happen?
The American government in 1940, even on the best
of interpretations, by pursuing a policy of
resource strangulation of Japan (cutting off their
oil supplies), knew that it was only a question of
when and where Japan would strike back.
The American government in 1970 (I meant: 2001, sorry),
even on the best of interpretations, by pursuing a policy of
letting our dependence on OPEC oil grow willy-nilly,
knew that only unending and unstinting good luck
could prevent at the very least a social and economic crisis second
only to The Great Depression. The only question, again, was
precisely where and when.
America came out of World War II not only unscathed,
but vastly enriched not just in its capital infrastructure
but also in its "brain power" (thanks to Hitler chasing
so many of the great minds of the age out of Europe).
Maybe T.S. Eliot really was right:
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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