Monday, July 24, 2006

The Mighty Fall Further

Jammed off the radar by bad news from Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan and America's other warfare related foreign policy fumbles is another issue that bodes ill for the ability of "the mightiest nation in history" to favorably influence international relationships. As Tom Wright of the New York Times reports, key global trade talks have gone down the flusher.
After five years of negotiations to reduce barriers to international trade, global trade talks broke down today when the United States and the European Union failed to agree to reduce farm subsidies and protective tariffs.

Negotiators from the United States, the European Union, Japan, Brazil, India and Australia were deadlocked after meeting for 14 hours at the World Trade Organization’s headquarters here on Sunday, prompting the director general of the organization, Pascal Lamy, to suspend further discussions.

The general idea behind creating a global economy was to create an economic model in which armed conflict would ebb because it would disrupt trade that contributed to the prosperity of all parties involved. As you might expect, the main point of contention was over America's tariff protection and subsidizing of its farmers, which gives you the big picture of where the Bush administration's warfare-centric neoconservative policies have led us. We can't even hold talks on global trade without turning them in to a worldwide food fight.

Digging Our Way to China

America's standing as an honest broker and an agent of "good" has never been lower. Young Mister Bush has squandered the moral heroism banked by predecessors like Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and his father, George H.W. Bush. The country of big shoulders that the rest of the world could lean on has become the bully nation. Domestically, the government "of the people, by the people, for the people" has become the official sponsor of special interests, big business, big energy and the military industrial complex.

Commentator Bob Higgins has written a wonderful two-part column titled "Class Warfare at Big Flo's Diner." Bob chronicles the plight of Jane, a middle aged divorcee who works for less than minimum wage as a waitress in a large chain diner type restaurant. Jane works overtime for tips only because her diner chain's bean counting corporate gurus won't allow overtime pay.

Can someone explain to me how a nation that can spend more than a half trillion dollars annually on counterproductive foreign wars and the machinery that supports them let this sort of thing go on within its own borders?

Part of the answer may lie in the reality that on a subsistence of $2.36 per hour plus tips, Jane can't afford to pay the likes of Bob Dole to lobby Congress on her behalf.

Guess who else can't afford Bob Dole class lobbyists. Start with the more than 600 thousand Lebanese refugees created by the ongoing Israel-Hezbollah crisis. And between the Israelis and the Lebanese refugees, guess who can afford lobbyists like Bob Dole.

And guess further who's really driving the policy by which Condi Rice stares at her shiny Italian boots while refusing to push for an immediate ceasefire that might avoid making even more Lebanese refugees, a significant portion of whom are lining up right now in front of Hezbollah recruiting offices.

And we wonder why "home grown" terrorists are popping up lately.

There is no front on which the Bush administration has not squandered the gains of previous American foreign and domestic efforts. How much deeper will they dig us?

#

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

15 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:11 PM

    couldn't have said it better. Bravo.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Poorly, Lurch. And how about good old Pete Coors getting picked up for DUI?

    Anynomous, thanks for stopping by and posting.

    ReplyDelete
  3. There you go again, Jeff, making sense. Your best line IMO? "the reality that on a subsistence of $2.36 per hour plus tips, Jane can't afford to pay the likes of Bob Dole to lobby Congress on her behalf."
    Bingo!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous10:10 PM

    One small speck of hope crept up today from an unlikely source. Arlen Specter is working on a bill that will challenge the Bush administration's "signing statements" misuse (and overuse), asking for the judicial branch to render it unconstitutional to do that. Hey, its a start. . .

    ReplyDelete
  5. And the other thing about tips, is that there is little incentive to even really hustle for them, since most restaurants pool the pot and divvie it up at the end of the night.

    I have had the darnedest time trying to slip a few bills to a waiter/waitress that was particularly deserving, because the restaurant's policy did not allow it.

    These poor workers are scared to even take an extra fiver under the table, because if they are caught not pooling it, they are out the door.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ha! -- "fiver" -- shows the type of place I frequent (actually, I eat by myself mostly, and not in the fanciest of places...).

    ReplyDelete
  7. I was fascinated by the term "home-grown terrorist". I've been called that a bit recently.

    Apparently being Muslim is enough to convince people that I am thirsting to kill.

    Hard not to get cynical and frustrated in a world where I am now not just condemned for being Arab (I'm not - I just happen to be born looking like I am, which is hardly my fault!), but for being female (women are still not treated with equality - even in the West), and now for being Muslim. I am " a malignant cancer" on the Earth, and I should be "eradicated". I was told to go home, quite a lot recently (I was born here, where should I go?). Then while defending lebanese civilians rights I was told if I care so much, I should go there - I would, except the lovely Israeli gentleman have bombed the airport, blocked the ports, and I cant afford it anyway.

    Tell me, when people say this to others - do they really think it will make us (muslims) turn round and hug them and want to integrate more? This blind hate of "others" is why the world is in chaos.

    How many people hate/displike Muslims and Islam???

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous8:22 AM

    Why, in the name of God, is nobody compelling Bush fils to resign? It is completely obvious to the whole nation that he both is incompetent and doesn't care.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hey, gang:

    Catching up with the thread (I've been getting behind a lot lately, haven't I?)

    Lurch,

    I'm still on the fence about globalization: was it a bad idea or a good idea executed poorly? 5.5 years into the Bush adminstration, I'm no longer willing to cut them slack for anything that started before their watch. This trade deal negotiation that just went bust has lasted almost the entire Bush tenure.

    Zebster,

    That's the part that really hit home for me in Bob's story. Unless we show Washington that big interests can't buy votes, we'll have no representation there at all.

    Tom,

    Yes, it's a start. To date, though, it doesn't seem Specter has been able to garner support in his own party. Maybe things are changing.

    ecclOneNine

    There you go. A congressman can take all kinds of money and perks, but a waitress can't accept a fiver. Man.

    Tahnia,

    Don't give up hope. Not everybody is an ingorant blow hole.

    Anonymous,

    I think because if he resigns, guess who takes his place.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Don't know, Lurch. I just don't know.

    What's the real cause of failure. The globalization concept or our broken foreign and domestic policies?

    ReplyDelete
  11. lol
    thanks
    " ignorant blow hole." i like that - i'm gonna use it!

    ReplyDelete
  12. I.e., they need to come up for air.

    ReplyDelete
  13. But Lurch, globalization serves more than merely the multi-national corporations - it also guarantees cheap labor to the moneyed few, who've never gotten over their loss of multiple servants per household.

    The powerful in this country have always resented the middle class, and everything that gives a decent life to the masses. After all, what's the use of power if you can't lord it over your "inferiors"? They really do want to return to the days of having most of us bow and scrape just to get our daily meal.

    Then again, maybe I'm just overly stressed by the persistent uncharacteristic heat wave here in Oakland…global warming? What global warming?

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous8:35 AM

    Is it not easier to negotiate with the "capo dei capi" directly?

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous,

    So I've always heard.

    ReplyDelete