The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle
Commentary on the Flux of Events
Assuming that there really is such an organization as al Qaeda -- which I do -- then they may achieve one of their goals in damaging US economic life without actually conducting any further attacks here. Just by continuing to issue threats they can very efficiently direct large flows of US government money into financing massive homeland defense operations. They can close down airports, bridges, nuclear generating plants, banks, government offices and interrupt a lot of business. Just this week, the Pentagon was moved to resume costly air force surveillance flights over New York City. These costs are going to add up and join all the other mounting externalities in our national life that are moving us toward the Clusterfuck tipping point.
We head toward a most dangerous summer. As India and Pakistan prepare to joust, Russia and China look on in the background, trying to measure their future hegemony over the Central Asian oil reserves. With whom, in this, does radical Islam side? Well, not Russia, which has been battling Chechen muslims for ten years, and Afghanis before that, not to mention all the other aggrieved Islamistans of their former empire surrounding the Caspian basin. And, of course, the India-Pakistan / Russia-China contest leaves a sizable US expeditionary force stranded, more or less, at the Asian epicenter in Afghanistan. General Tommy Franks starts to look a little like the Sundance Kid surrounded by Federales in a provincial Mexican plaza.
If Pakistan and India exchange nuclear strikes, their war may be very short, but it would be follow by disease outbreaks at least as severe in terms of human life.
Meanwhile, is the US losing its nerve to disarm Saddam Hussein? Sooner or later he'll possess some workable nukes. I believe he would attempt to use it on Israel at the first opportunity, if only to establish his name in history as the one who struck the hardest blow against the most hated of all infidels. The Israelis, in turn, have the ability to turn the capital cities of all their antagonists into ashtrays.
The Europeans don't want to go near Iraq. They have not really recovered from the trauma of World War Two and they want no part of World War Three. Can you blame them? The US doesn't want to go near Iraq during the summer because the military brass feel constrained to encumber US ground forces in chemo-biohazard suits that would parboil a soldier wearing it in summer weather.
In any of these cases, there may be little that the US can actually do. Will we retreat back into our corner of the Western Hemisphere and wait for the dust to settle.
Do the crude oil supplies keep a'coming? What becomes of the Global Economy? Is Merrill Lynch still bullish?
Sooner or later, a walking human smallpox bomb is going to turn up in an airport somewhere.
And where in the world is Osama Bin Laden?
Amid all these tensions and global anxieties we drift on a raft of infotainment