Flawed Thinking

As a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks our country has been in a continual state of fear; bouncing between yellow and orange, whatever that might mean. State and municipal law enforcement recruitment is at an all-time high; so high, in fact, municipalities and even some states are breaking their budgets trying to afford their swollen departments. In stark contrast, on a national level, Homeland Security’s secretary Janet Napolitano has virtually unlimited funds to use to upgrade and increase our national security forces. She actually has more money to spend than places to spend it.


As a result of all the money spent since 9/11 we should be as secure as a baby in a crib. What do you think? Are we? According to members of Congress we aren't. In fact, our war against Muslims has produced record numbers of recruits dedicated to our destruction.

As a direct result of the additional troops in blue all over our country, crime should be down everywhere, so conventional theory claims. In fact, crime at the street level is. However crimes committed by members of the upper echelons of society have never been greater, affected more people, or done more damage.


The greatest crimes in the history of mankind have been committed during the last 10 years. Incredibly, not a single person has gone to jail, and none of the wizards behind the scene have even been indicted. The greatest crimes in our history that I am referring to are, 1) the invasion of Iraq and, 2) the looting of the savings and pension funds of tens of millions of Americans.


Perhaps the greatest gangster to have ever lived is our former vice president, Dick Cheney. He almost single-handedly manipulated the country, through lies and bullysuasion, into an unprovoked war which cost the country $1 trillion and the world hundreds of thousands of lives. He then was able to manipulate Congress into designating his company, Halliburton, the ONLY American company with security clearance approval high enough to do business in the country of the war he created, Iraq. All the money flowing into Iraq flowed through Halliburton. When word of outrageous price gouging and death causing faulty workmanship in military barracks built by Halliburton contractors surfaced, Halliburton spun its KBR division offshore to avoid US prosecution. During this war Cheney broke international treaties and countless American laws by encouraging torture and other war crimes. Dick Cheney will most certainly go down in history as the most successful evil gangster of all time.


The other major crime committed during the first decade of a brand-new century was the credit default swap fiasco engineered by Wall Street and facilitated by the government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Mortgage bankers throughout the country granted everybody who wanted a loan on a home a mortgage, whether they qualified or not. Those mortgage bankers made huge fortunes in commissions on what were later to become known as liars loans. Mortgage brokers bundled up these worthless mortgages, put what turned out to be phony insurance on them, and then sold them at what appeared to be stiff discounts to other greedy bankers. To close the loop on those toxic assets these worthless mortgages were finally sold, again at enormous profits, to the final guppies in the pond, the less sophisticated pension funds and financial institutions managing the IRAs of tens of millions of Americans. Although none of the millions of Americans who were invested in these retirement plans had anything to do with the scam of the century, they bore the brunt of the losses while those responsible for the crash walked away with billions, indictment free.


So where is that flawed thinking I mentioned earlier? It is in the same place our war philosophy is; stuck in the Stone Age by our military-industrial complex. For example, while we have the technology to wage war with equipment which causes no death or property destruction, we continued to wage war with people against people in what can only be described as a frenzy of bloodlust. By our doing so we sacrifice lives, property, any claim to the high moral ground, or any sense of pride or national honor. We could, if we weren't being mislead by Washington gangsters and war profiteers, be inspiring worldwide peace and prosperity by using more humane methods to deal with the poorest among the world’s citizens. Imagine what world opinion of America would be if we started to build our world's poorest nations up instead of blowing them up.


On our state and local levels our flawed thinking is that more "men in blue" will deter crime. While it's true that crime on the streets of America is declining and today is statisticly at historically low levels, the types of crimes hurting most people today are "white-collar" crimes which armies of men in blue are powerless to prevent.

Regardless of how many cops we put on the beat, nothing can be done about the back street boys or politician plotting the next big American swindle behind closed doors.

So the truth about our nation is that in spite of the massive amounts of money spent on police and security during the years following 9/11, no amount of money or men in blue could have prevented the biggest crimes in our nation's history. Crimes which resulted in the looting of America. Crimes which resulted in the carnage inflicted on the Iraq nation. The looting of America's middle class was accomplished by our own upper-class, which has outstripped the world's most notorious crime lords in scope, audacity, and the massive amount of theft and destruction.

To think we can prevent the continued looting of America by adding more uniforms to an already over policed society is the real flaw in our nation's thinking, the real fly in the ointment. All we will accomplish is to bankrupt ourselves. Re-instating the "rule of law" in our country instead of "rule by the elite" is the only way to secure the future of America.