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| Marshal Plan Logo 1948 |
The War on Terrorism is like the War on Drugs. It is an advertising ploy. "It's like a war on dandruff," said Gore Vidal. It is a completely planned and constructed media matrix.
One more thing is an old rule about wars: When a nation destroys another nation in war, the victor must put in place an enormous program to rebuild the conquered nation. This is to prevent a repeat. Remember the Weimar Republic in Germany in the years after WWI? The Germans were required to pay heinous amounts of money as reparations to all the victor countries. That little scheme and it's consequential social and economic disaster gave the world Adolf Hitler. It took another ten years to vanquish that evil doer. Despite the tens of millions murdered and maimed, some small good for America came of this. General Eisenhower later led our nation as President. The last helpful republican to hold the Oval Office, Eisenhower certainly knew about the rules for conquest and giant wars, and so did Ike's predecessor Harry Truman.
Named for the Secretary of State, George Marshall, the Marshal Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was originated under democratic President Truman with both US State Department officials, William L. Clayton and George F. Kennan, and Brookings Institution and the republican Senator from Michigan, Arthur H. Vandenberg who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Please note how the Senators of the opposition actually wanted to make some good for our nation and the world. Not so in the present congress.
The Plan was huge. The money was in the hundreds of billions in present day money. The Plan worked incredibly well. Counter to present day dogmas of the tea party republicans, the Plan endorsed productivity with ethical business methods and the Plan encouraged labor union membership. Unlike Afganistan and Iraq, the Plan did not sub-contract with American front corporations like Haliburton and others for rebuilding infrastructure. All the money ended up in the hands of the Europeans.
If we won the War against the USSR, where was the Marshall Plan? If we won the War in Afganistan, where was the Marshal Plan for rebuilding democracy like we did in WWII Europe? If we won the war in Iraq, where was the Marshall Plan. When Russia transformed from the dictatorship of seventy years, there was nothing other than advice from the smug gang of pre-tea party republicans running things. There was no Marshall Plan at all. For Afganistan there have been a few projects to help, but not a Marshall plan. The same in Iraq. In the Middle East building a few bridges and a school or two is a spit in the desert.
Why does our US Congress not know this? Why did not the Reagan-Bush v1.0-Bush v2.0-Cheney-Rumsfeld victors in Russia and Afganistan and Iraq know this? Oh, it must be those old "anything goes" libertarian tea party fools in power and their myopic dogmas for solving economic and social disasters with even more disaster.
As I said a couple of months ago, "How many libertarian tea party fools does it take to make a destroyed economy work? Answer: None the free market and god will take care of it."
Well, now we have the free market Putin who is a throwback to Krushchev. Most importantly, we have the god of ISIS taking care of things in Iraq and Syria. Thank you tea party republican fools in our US Congress.
