Psssst! The Republicans and Chinese Communists (“Chi-Coms”) have something in common.
They both much preferred the foreign policy of George W. Bush to that of Barack Obama.
It’s one of the many fascinating revelations offered in Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Uses of American Power.
The author is David E. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
Early in 2011, Sanger had lunch at the Central Party School outside Beijing. This is where the party’s leadership debates questions that are thought too controversial to air in public.
A retired general in the People’s Liberation Army sat down next to Sanger and, in a relaxed moment of candor, said:
“I sat through many meetings of the People’s Liberation Army in the 80s and 90s where we tried to imagine what your military forces would look like in 10 to 20 years.
“But frankly, we never thought that you would spend trillions of dollars and so much time tied down in Afghanistan and the Middle East. We never imagined that as a choice you would make.”
Chinese military parade
And, writes Sanger: “Not so secretly, the Chinese were delighted by the Bush-era wars. The longer the United States was bogged down trying to build democracies in foreign lands, the less capable it was of competing in China’s backyard.
“But now that America was emerging from a lost decade in the Middle East, the Chinese began to ask: How should China respond? With cooperation, confrontation, or something in-between?”
And the Chinese were equally thrilled that the United States had squandered so much of its treasury during the eight-year Bush Presidency.
In the decade following 9/11, the Pentagon went on an unprecedented spending binge. The defense budget grew by 67%, to levels 50% higher than it had been per average year during the Cold War.
According to Sanger: “An estimate [the New York Times] put together for the tenth anniversary of the [9/11] attacks suggested that the United States had spent at least $3.3 trillion.”
These monies had gone on
- securing the country;
- invading and trying to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq; and
- caring for wounded American soldiers.
“Put another way,” writes Sanger, “for every dollar al-Qaeda spent destroying the World Trade Center and attacking the Pentagon, America had spent $6.6 million in response.
“The annual Pentagon budget of $700 billion was equivalent to the combined spending of the next twenty largest military powers….
“The world had come to expect that America would underwrite global security, regardless of the cost. Obama was determined to change that mind-set.”
In short, America became financially and militarily vulnerable during the Presidency of George W. Bush.
And this flatly contradicts the standard Republican line: Obama is a weak President–and is betraying us to the (pick one or both) Muslims/Communists.
It also speaks volumes that the two most important members of the George W. Bush administration declined to attend the 2012 Republican National Convention.
That, of course, meant former President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
And why was that? Perhaps it’s because polls show that a majority of Americans continue
- To blame Bush for lying the country into a needless, bloody and expensive war with Iraq.
- To blame him for presiding over the 2008 Wall Street meltdown.
- To see Dick Cheney as the Dr. Strangelovian manipulator of George W. Bush.
Even former President George H.W. Bush said he wouldn’t attend the convention.
It’s possible that Bush, Sr., didn’t want to serve as a reminder that his son left the White House with the lowest popularity rating of any modern President.
And that was just fine with those planning to attend the convention–especially its nominee-to-be, Mitt Romney.
They wanted to do with George W. Bush what Nikita Khrushchev and his fellow Communists did with the embarrassing Joseph Stalin: Bury him far from public view.
He didn’t want the viewing audience to be reminded that the United States sharply declined in wealth and prestige during the eight-year reign of George W. Bush and a Republican Congress.
Romney and his fellow conventioneers also didn’t want to remind the country of something else: That Obama has spent most of his own Presidency trying to undo the harm his predecessor did, in both foreign and domestic policy.
Thus, now approaching the 2016 election, the Republican party finds itself torn.
On one hand, its leaders want to claim that Barack Obama is the worst President in the history of the Republic.
On the other hand, they know that most Americans continue to view the last Republican President in just that way.
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MEXICO: A FAILED NATION-STATE
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 12, 2015 at 12:24 amOn May 22, 2013, Mexican soldiers arrested Yanira Maldonado–-mother of seven-–as she and her husband, Gary, were returning to Arizona after attending a family funeral in Mexico.
During a search of their bus at a military checkpoint in the northwestern state of Sonora, soldiers asked everyone to get off.
Yanira Maldonado
At first, Gary Maldonado was told that marijuana had been found under his seat and found himself arrested. After his father contacted the U.S. Consulate in Hermosillo, authorities said they were mistaken and released Gary.
Then they charged his wife, claiming they had found 12 pounds of marijuana under her bus seat.
After being detained in Mexico for more than a week on drug charges, Yanira Maldonado was released and returned to the United States.
Maldonado met with reporters briefly and said, “Many thanks to everyone, especially my God who let me go free, my family, my children, who with their help, I was able to survive this test.”
Gary Maldonado said he believed Mexican soldiers at the checkpoint wanted a bribe.
It’s entirely likely that this was the case.
Anyone who reads Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields, will certainly think so.
Written by Investigative Reporter Charles Bowden and published in 2010, Murder City provides a terrifying–-and almost lethally depressing–-view of what happens when a city–-and a country–-disintegrates.
Ciudad Juárez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Notorious as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad or Mogadishu.
It’s so overwhelmed with the violence of drug trafficking that its leading citizens—police, politicians, even the drug lords—find it safer to live in El Paso.
Hundreds of millions of narco-dollars flow into Juárez each week, and the violence and corruption that follow yield 200 to 300 murders each year.
Among the casualties of that violence:
This is a city–-and a country–-where virtually no one is safe.
If there is any one story in Murder City that symbolizes the total corruption of a society awash with drugs and the profits they produce, it is this:
A Mexican priest serves as confessor to drug lords. They, in turn, believe their confessions to be safe, as they are supposed to be heard only by the priest and God.
But one of the drug lords wears a large gold crucifix, which the priest secretly covets.
So he turns from drug lord confessor to police informer–-and the Mexican police raid the next drug lord gathering and confiscate a large quantity of narcotics.
The police don’t intend to turn in the seized narcotics. Instead, they will sell these for their own profit.
And as a reward for his cooperation, the priest is given the large gold crucifix–-which he blesses and consecrates to his God.
Who, exactly, is behind all these killings?
And why?
And who, if anyone, is in charge of Juárez–-or Mexico?
Bowden states it is difficult to answer such questions because the Mexican press has been thoroughly corrupted by drug cartel monies or terrorized by drug cartel hit squads.
Reporters have been murdered–-by the cartels and the army–-for writing anything about killings, the army or the cartels.
The world of Murder City is a nightmarish one:
When you leave its pages, you are grateful that you can safely put its evil behind you–-unlike the residents of Juarez who remain trapped in its web.
Meanwhile, there is a lesson in this book–-and in the case of Yanira Maldonado–-for anyone with common sense to learn: Stay out of Mexico.
During the 1980s, when Americans were being routinely kidnapped in Beirut, still others–-as if bent on suicide–-were getting passports to travel to Lebanon.
For residents of this failed nation-state called Mexico, it’s too late. Such endemic corruption can never be fought successfully.
But for Americans who do not live there, the message should be clear: “Keep out. Enter at your own risk.”
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