Thursday, May 2, 2013

What, We Worry?     
    I bet the nine questions below do not top your list of worries.
    1. How can we keep China from replacing the U.S. as the dominant power in the China Sea?
    2. How can we keep Persia from replacing the U.S. as the dominant power in the Persian Gulf?
    3. Does rising Indian influence in the Indian Ocean pose an incipient threat to U.S. interests?
    4. How can the U.S. reverse the trend of Latin Americans taking over Latin America?*
    5. How can the U.S. make the North Koreans give up their nukes so that we can intimidate them again?
    6. How can the U.S. strive harder to do whatever Israel tells us to do?
    7. How can the U.S. get Hamid Karzai, the president Washington installed in Afghanistan, to do what we bribe him to do?
    8. Ditto for the regime the U.S. props up in Pakistan?
    9. Will the CIA finally succeed in assassinating Fidel Castro before he dies of old age?
    With our busy schedules, scurrying between the unemployment office and the soup kitchen, few Americans have time for foreign policy. They leave that to President Obama and his administration. Since we already know from grade school that we’re always the good guys, we assume that anyone Obama is warning or warring on must be bad guys.
    Not only are they bad, they’re so evil that we have no choice but to violate every law of God and man to combat them. Many of us don't enjoy torturing people, but sometime it’s just plain necessary to waterboard someone 183 times.
    Not only that, fighting the bad guys invariably requires stupendous sums of tax payer money, even if our enemies are impoverished feudal tribes living in mud huts. Lots of Americans can’t understand why Washington has no dough for civic and social needs, but unlimited moolah to zap $10 mud huts with million dollar missiles. That’s because Americans are unsophisticated. It’s the same reason  few of us fret the questions above.
    The solution:  I know it’s not easy, but to be better informed we have to begin spending less time with Jerry Springer and more time with Wolf Blitzer. 


*Produce The Deed, Secretary Kerry
In recent days, John Kerry, our Secretary of State, revived the long standing claim by the United States that it owns Latin America, presumably including its 500 million people. He described the Western Hemisphere as "our backyard," headlined in the south of the border media as "el patio trasero de los Estados Unidos." But as in past, the U.S. official supplied no paper work supporting this claim.