I also found the proposal to eliminate the CIA puzzling. If anything, one can plausibly claim CIA fingerprints on the events that are most likely to stop and bring down the neocon lunacy currently running the country.

It is the corporate elite that worries me. The auto manufacturers are being gutted by their healthcare costs. Had they had any brains, they would have realized decades ago that their future economic competitiveness rested in part on universal health coverage in the US. But, like every other great decision out of Detroit (e.g. investing in SUV production while the rest of the world developed hybrids), you cannot overestimate their stupidity.

I see no reassuring evidence that the rest of corporate America does not share the myopia and stupidity of Detroit. That includes continuing to support, via their media empires, tax-cutting deficit-spending Republican administrations into the foreseeable future of economic meltdown and beyond.

I think most would agree that we need the CIA at the level of police work and intelligence gathering. I doubt you would get the same consensus on paramilitary activities, coups, assasinations, insurrections and suppression of domestic dissent.

"We" (the military/industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about) have made a conscious decision to stop exporting consumer goods and services and rely solely on our single hegemonic export:

"SECURITY"

The blowback comes from states (or individuals within them) that resist the intrusion. The fastest way for many of these states to resist in a real and compelling way is to raise the ante to atomic.

Reinforcing that paradigm has become a way of life for the Chimp-in-Chief. Got a military junta toppling an elected government? Just get the bomb and he becomes our strong ally in the "war on terror"- even if he says screw the promised elections and protects Osama bin Laden.

If you resist our "overtures", we will find a way (CIA or not) to knock you off and start buying off the next guy in line unless you play ball- but if you got a nuke, well.......

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

Sometimes things just get worse. That it hasn't happened in the living memory of 90% of the US population doesn't mean it won't happen.

We have had two fundamental changes in the past 40 years.

The first is the elimination of the US has a maker of consumer goods. This has had the follow on effect of changing the bargain between capital and labor. The result is that workers are now at risk and the standard of living has stagnated (declined for those at the bottom).

The second is that the US is now a debtor nation. We have been living on borrowed money and on the selling of our infrastructure to foreigners. There are only two ways to lessen our deficits (both domestic and trade) these are to raise taxes and/or to water our currency. The only place to find enough money to pay down parts of the deficit is in the hands of the super wealthy and corporations. Political forces and the lack of any strong populist sentiment in this country make this unlikely.

So like every other weak economy we will devalue our currency via inflation. This will raise costs for most items since they need to be imported and lower the standard of living for the working classes since they no longer are organized enough to bargain for wage increases.

For a good example of how an advanced country with a strong economic and industrial base can end up a basket case just read up on the Wiemar Republic. The runaway inflation of 1923 was the result of fiscal policies just as blind to reality as those now in place in the US.

The US cannot impose its will on the world anymore, no matter how good we are at blowing things up. China has locked up much of the oil resources in Africa and made deals with Russia and neighboring states. Russia is setting the energy policy for much of Europe and Latin America is moving towards socialism despite the best efforts to undermine local officials by the CIA.

We are in for a rough ride. Thinking that we slip out of our present situation without a major adjustment is wishful thinking. Sorry...

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

That's not too hard to answer. As soon as oil trades in anything but dollars (read: euros), the jig is up. Our military keeps the oil flowing into dollars per barrel, which in turn holds up the fiat dollar currency and our entire debtor economy.

Iran is in the process of starting a new exchange to trade their oil in euros. Gee, I wonder if we'll do something about that soon? Attack Iran? No way!

PS - Saddam made no secret of his intent to trade oil:euros as soon as UN sanctions were lifted in Iraq. Coincidence?

And what would oil traders do with their euros?

So I still hold out more than a little hope that the political process can save us from the collapse that Johnson fears now.

England was a democracy for the entirety of the duration of its greatest empire (the so-called "Second Empire" or the period after the U.S. gained independence), including the period when it subjugated India. How can you have faith in the political process knowing that, and knowing that Caesar was able to seize power because he was popular with the Roman masses?

It's one of the problems I had with Johnson's piece: I thought it was, if anything, too optimistic. England "surrendered" its empire because it was a tired nation, acutely aware that it had been eclipsed on the world stage by the United States and the Soviet Union. Read the literature of the period -- especially the essays and op-ed pieces. They understood that the game was just done, that with or without India, their days as a great power were over: it was time for the old to make way for the new. I do not know of one case in history, not one, where a great power willingly walked away from the opportunity to dominate, whether it was their local region or the entire world stage. I wish Johnson had come up with an example other than England, because it would have given me some room for optimism here, but there is none. I certainly have none based on "the political process."

Chalmers, Molly Ivans died today and you're probably going to carry more weight. Thank the gods for your grace and wisdom. Waiting for Nemesis to be be released. Jim

Re: The first is the elimination of the US has a maker of consumer goods. This has had the follow on effect of changing the bargain between capital and labor. The result

"Elimination"? Serious decline, yes, certainly. But you can still buy consummer goods made in America and not every factory has shut its doors.

Re: The second is that the US is now a debtor nation.

We've been in that situation on and off for much of our history. America was born a debtor nation.

Re: There are only two ways to lessen our deficits (both domestic and trade) these are to raise taxes

We'll raise taxes. Bill Clinton proved that it's possible to close the deficit with fairly minor tax increases and without damaging the economy.

Re: So like every other weak economy we will devalue our currency via inflation.

Unlikely. The Fed has a cow and plunges the economy into recession every time someone even so much as whispers "inflation". Moreover, the rich and powerful would suffer far greater losses in an inflationary regime than they would with Clintonian tax increases.

Re: For a good example of how an advanced country with a strong economic and industrial base can end up a basket case just read up on the Wiemar Republic

The Weimar Republic's problems were created in a railcar in France, then sustained by fools in London and Paris. Nothing comparable exists in our own situation. (Weimar Germany had no military; the US with the world's largest military and 10,000 nukes is not the sort of nation to whom others start dictating terms to in railcars.)

Re: China has locked up much of the oil resources in Africa

China's locks might as well be made of tissue paper given the extraordinary political instability of Africa and the inability of China to project force beyond its own region.

Re: Latin America is moving towards socialism despite the best efforts to undermine local officials by the CIA.

Latin America may well wreck itself if it follows Chavezist path to despotic socialism rather than seeking the democratic path to socialism that Western Europe has pioneered. The jury is very much out on what the future hold for the region.

Re: We are in for a rough ride.

Once Bush is gone and assuming someone with a few brains and common sense sits in the White House things will right themselves, just as they did in the 90s.

Re: How can you have faith in the political process knowing that, and knowing that Caesar was able to seize power because he was popular with the Roman masses?

It's worth noting here that Julius Caesar's enemies were the conservatives and oligarchs of his day, and that he qualified as a liberal populist if we impose modern definitions on the first century BC. His seizing of power only happened after his enemies repeatedly resorted to constitutionally abusive means to destroy him. (Napoleon too was more a man or the left than the right)

Re: I do not know of one case in history, not one, where a great power willingly walked away from the opportunity to dominate, whether it was their local region or the entire world stage.

The Chinese did so repeatedly,whenever a new emperor decided he did not like the corruption that foreign involvement brought to China. Ditto for Japan, which could have given Europe a run for its money in the 17th century if the Shoguns hadn't locked the place down tight as a prison.

* We need the CIA to fight the real war on terror IMO.

* We should cut the military budget again, and we can always claim it is a temporary measure to pay off the deficit.

* When conservatives complain about our cutting the military budget, we can at least throw the the voters a bone regarding our increasing the CIA's and Special Forces budgets since terrorists were our priority now. (But there would be more slashed from the military budget than increased including CIA's budget.) How many battleships do we need to fight guerrilla terrorist militaries?

* As far as nefarious CIA activity - and I assume you have linked that with ineffectiveness in fighting terrorist organiziations, I would think if the CIA puts terrorism on the front burner then it would be necessary activity where blowback would be moot since doing nothing to thwart al queda etc. would have another form of blowback - making us an easy target.

* The difference between a capitalist government spending tons on it's military budget and a communist government spending tons on it's military budget is in capitalism the money trickles down. This doesn't mean I agree with Reagan's voodoo economics where all the money the super rich accumulate will trickle down. It's a different trickle down when working Americans trickle their money down - and in the soviet union I would guess there was no similar trickle down at all due to the nature of communism.

That said, I would like to read Johnson's book of course and I am sure I will be educated / enlightened and that I will agree with a lot of it (perhaps differing more in details than overall concepts.)

Thanks Howard.

Regarding if I mean CIA or special operators to fight the war on terror, well I'm no expert as you know. It just seems to me we would need to pay cashola to a lot of overseas tipsters and spies to find out where the bad guys are located. As to what happens next I have no clue although I would guess the delta force is called upon to capture or kill the bad guys.

I have no clue as to the CIAs budget - whether it needs to be increased or not, in actuality. Common sense would imply that we should shift funds from battleships to intelligence gathering is all. Since we are fighting a guerrilla force.

I havn't read Johnson's post yet, I will next as I see he posted a thread, nor have I read his book (although I would like to.) But I was shooting from the hip regarding responding to this thread author's mention of eliminating the CIA to avoid blowback. Rather than eliminate it how about just eliminating the problem policies? As obviously we'd have even more blowback if we eliminated it (that would never happen anyways of course.)

Let me expand on some of your observations, with specific reference to insurgencies (using a broad definition).

Look: in India and Africa, at least the British actually were running the country. But in Vietnam and Iraq, the US has wound up in situations where it has very little control or influence over its client state in any meaningful sense, and all it does is put its troops in to keep the client state's government in power and to get shot at by insurgencies. That's a very weird kind of empire.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

The Chinese did so repeatedly,whenever a new emperor decided he did not like the corruption that foreign involvement brought to China. Ditto for Japan, which could have given Europe a run for its money in the 17th century if the Shoguns hadn't locked the place down tight as a prison.

The Chinese empire expanded until it began collapsing from internal dissension. The country shut itself off from the world because it couldn't control the outside world -- a sign of weakness rather than strength. In fact, China is a perfect illustration of Johnson's point about the fate of empires. As for Japan, I'm not clear on exactly how they could have rivaled Europe in the 17th century. Japan tried, twice, at the end of the 16th century to conquer China, and never got further than Korea (and not all that far in Korea, at that). Exactly how, a few decades after that experience, they could be expected to somehow challenge Europe, I don't know.

Apropos the Japanese against the Koreans, I wonder how many people know of Korean Admiral Yi Sunsin, the winner of every naval battle he commanded. Yi is a figure ranking with Nelson, Spruance, Togo, Cimon of Athens and Drake.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Re: As for Japan, I'm not clear on exactly how they could have rivaled Europe in the 17th century.

They were already producing firearms superior to anything found in Europe, but the ruling class found such innovatiosn threatening and stopped production. Had Japan been willing to continue they would have become technologically superior to Europe in short order and most certainly would have dominated eastern Asia (though probably not have projected themselves beyond that)
I also disagree about China. When the Ming shut down China's expansion in the 15th century it most certainly was not to the country expanding beyond its limit; it had in fact contracted from its Mongol expansion. The shut-down was due soley to xenophobia and fear of change.

.> NSA, for that matter, has very strong
> linguists, especially when military jargon
> is involved.

Hmmm. Maybe Josh could find and hire one who is about to retire, and assign him to translating your comments.

sPh

That's a joke, BTW!

Eh. As it turned out, getting rid of the empire was economically unsustainable too. There was a crisis, but the response to the crisis depended both on the characters of those in charge at the time, and on the ways of thinking which were in circulation at the time, to be seized upon by those actors.

I think my skepticism is towards the whole "We gave up our Empire" way of thinking. Countries don't act in unified self-conscious ways like that. Particular groups of actors inside countries act according to their beliefs and interests, and the countries are moved by the interplay of their actions.

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone