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3 COMMENT Ideology wins, the people
lose By Julian Delasantellis
Democratic Party nominee for the
presidency John Kerry, rhetorically asked the US
Senate's Foreign Relations Committee: "How do you
ask a man to be the last man to die for a
mistake?" Unfortunately, all of the important
lessons young Lieutenant Kerry had for today were
sent straight down the memory hole by the
character assassinations organized by former White
House political director Karl Rove and his
unleashed attack dogs, the magnificently
mendaciously monikered Swift Boat Veterans for
Truth.
To me, what is going on with today's
quasi-mutinies is as natural as the basic human
instinct for self preservation, as the troops
choose not to sacrifice their lives or bodies for
a cause that has been proven to be a lie, for a
national political leadership that seems to have
so many other priorities more pressing than that
of protecting them from harm.
What is
really interesting here is not what is being done,
or in this case not being done, by the troops, but
by their officers. As in Vietnam, they are surely
very well aware of the charade being performed
right in front of their eyes by their troops.
The rigid mandates of a commissioned
officer's honor point to but one course of action
here; to bring the troops in their command up on a
charge of mutiny. This was not done in Vietnam,
and, as long as today's troops keep their
rebellion relatively quiet, it won’t be done here,
either. No soldier wants to be the last to die for
a mistake, more importantly here, no officer wants
to be the last to blow his career and chance for
promotion for one either.
Charging one's
own troops with this type of offense would be the
career advancement version of strapping a suicide
vest to one's torso and blowing up any further
hopes of promotion in the US military. Being the
self-professed commanding officer of mutinous
soldiers is the surest way to getting yourself
drummed up and out of the military by the service
promotions boards today so that you can be out
selling insurance annuities at shopping mall
kiosks tomorrow.
But even here, there is
another liar's logic at work, another reason why
America's officer class in Iraq, from young
lieutenants to the general staff, would look at
the truth and ask for other options.
Many
researchers, including Duke University Professor
of Political Science Ole Holsti, have noted that,
in comparison to the general population, and at
least before this current war, the political
orientation of the US military's officer class
skews heavily rightward.
Should their
troops' current rebellions make it further into
the general press, which would certainly happen if
this became a matter for the military courts, it
could not help but put the war and the war effort
in a highly negative light, demonstrating the fact
that many of the troops see their current and
potential sacrifices as pointless. This would
certainly work to the advantage of the Democrats
back home, and, much more so than the Sunni
jihadis of al-Queda, or the Quds Force of Iran,
the Democratic Party in the United States is the
real foe meant to be defeated in Iraq.
This is the total triumph of ideology over
competence, of political spin over truth. In much
the same way that the early post-invasion
administration of American Iraq viceroy L Paul
Bremer mucked up the country beyond recognition or
any possibility of repair, telling the truth about
the ongoing soldiers’ rebellion would strike a
blow to the "support the troops" ideological
orthodoxy that is, and will, keep America
fighting, bleeding and dying in Iraq, until at
least George W Bush’s final day in office in
January 2009, and possibly beyond that as well.
If ideology is trumping truth and
competence in an area as central to the nation's
future as the lives of its young soldiers, then it
shouldn't be all that surprising that it's also
reigning all-conquering over many other policy
arenas as well, including blocking any
governmental attempts to resolve the ongoing and
intensifying subprime mortgage crisis.
In
the Thursday, October 25, edition of the Financial
Times it was reported that US Democratic Senator
Charles Schumer, the chairman of the US Congress'
Joint Economic Committee, believed that current US
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would like to see
the US government take a more active role in
pulling the US financial system out of the current
deep hole of illiquidity and insolvency into which
it has jumped headlong, but Secretary Paulson was
being blocked by White House ideologues,
presumably including Bush himself, not wanting to
sacrifice their core principle of private markets
always and forever ruling supercedent over
government.
In that Paulson came to the
Treasury from previous employment as the chief
executive officer of US superstar investment bank
Goldman Sachs, it stands to reason that the man
who led the company that ruled the markets just
might know a thing or two about how to cure what's
currently roiling the markets.
Now that
last week's presumed private sector subprime
salvation, the US$100 billion rescue "superfund",
has foundered over the issue of just who was going
to be the one putting up the $100 billion (I wrote
about the quick rise, and ever quicker fall, of
the superfund in my ATol piece of October 23, Subprime fallout: Save our
souls) attention is turning to other,
possible government centered, solutions to the
crisis.
The New York Times is
editorializing in favor of a plan in which the US
government's Federal Deposit Insurance Commission
(FDIC), the agency that pays off depositors in
case of a member bank's insolvency, would act to
freeze interest rates on subprime mortgages before
they "reset" to much higher rates in the next few
months.
Many of the now long gone and hard
to find subprime mortgage brokers lured their
borrowers into the now ticking time bomb of their
mortgages with low, initial "teaser" rates that
would reset higher after a few years. The mortgage
brokers promised the borrowers that, when the time
came to pay the higher rates, the borrower could
avoid the executioner's axe by just re-financing
into another low interest mortgage, which, now, of
course, they can't. The borrowers believed the
brokers; why shouldn't they have? After all, the
brokers all wore shiny new suits and ties, and had
such nice offices at the far end of the strip mall
next to the coin laundromat and the Dairy Queen.
It is the specter of millions of these
subprime borrowers groaning, and finally
collapsing, from the weight of the burdens of
mortgage rate resets in the next few months that
is the real ghoulish fright terrifying Wall Street
this Halloween season. The FDIC plan could save
many of these poor lost souls, but how much good
it would do for the banks holding the subprime
mortgage paper is another question.
The
banks could be helped by another possible
solution. It has been suggested that the US
government’s two principal mortgage finance
assistance agencies, the Federal Home Loan and
Mortgage Corp (called Freddie Mac in the markets)
and the Federal National Mortgage Association
(called Fannie Mae), more aggressively buy the
subprime mortgage paper from the banks
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