Sometimes a point can be made by juxtaposing two events - one in the past, one in the future. Let's juxtapose the things Pearl Harbor wrought with the results of Kosovo.
* Pearl Harbor, according to an avid ZGram reader:
The strength of a legend grows as more and more people depend upon it for their psychic support. Such is the legend of Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor, to many older Americans, is the defining event of their lives. It marks the end of a nation trying to return to its non-interventionist ways. The key word is ***return***.
The US had dabbled in interventionism going back to the Spanish-American war of 1989, World War I, and the crushing of insurrection in the Philippines in the 1920s. It also marked the end of a non-militarist US.
Most of the wars of the 19th century had involved the conquest of a continent. The World War I fiasco left Americans with no permanent desire for foreign adventure. But World War II infected Americans with a permanent self-righteousness complex. It warped their souls and deadened their minds in a way which is hard to describe.
Instead of "Manifest Destiny", Americans now had the "manifest mission" to save the world. That was the true tragedy of Pearl Harbor. The loss of life, even the geopolitical consequences of 50 years of Cold War and Communism, were of less consequence ultimately than the "manifest mission".
Pearl Harbor changed domestic life, too. The permanent war economy made patriotism pay. True patriotism, staying out of foreign quarrels, became a very dangerous thing. An entire intellectual tradition at the root of the Republic's entire heritage was sent to the bottom - as surely as the fleet.
The American intelligence apparat with its horrendous record of botched intervention in other nations' affairs was an outgrowth of December 7, 1941 and the affairs heading up to it. A nation founded on relative integrity in foreign relations became an amateur late-comer to the centuries-old game of English cloak-and-dagger.
All US intelligence work from World War II days to the present is an outgrowth of the willing cooperation of the Roosevelt Administration with the British Security Coordination operating out of Rockefeller Center. A system of dirty deeds designed to serve a nation of pirates has been appropriated by a people who once tended to their own affairs.
A national mythology has been built around a war which should be reviled rather than worshipped. That war is now a secular religion. The Second World War is now deified the same way that the "New Deal" was once deified.
The purpose is the same - to intimidate the opposition of clear thinkers who can still see those two seminal events in their true light.
* Kosovo, as summarized in today's "Truth in Media" Report:
Cost of Kosovo War Put at "Only" $40 Billion
By the standards of the Bush administration wars, Bill Clinton's war on Serbia is bound to disappoint the "death merchants" and other industrial and media buzzards feeding off of the "perpetual commerce through perpetual wars" New World Order mantra.
The Wall Street Journal has reported from London on June 29 that
"No war comes cheap. But as brutal conflicts go, the showdown over Kosovo has proved something of a bargain," the Journal said.
"However ghoulish it might seem, economists and market analysts are busy toting up the cost of NATO's war against Yugoslavia... Their estimate so far: 35 billion euros to 38.5 billion euros, according to Salomon Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch & Co." (or about $40 billion). (...)
"It's a lot of money for some individual national budgets," says Holgar Schmieding, co-head of European economics at Merrill Lynch. "But for the national economies as a whole and for the Western financial markets, it isn't big."
Merrill's *38.5 billion "ballpark estimate," he says, works out to 0.25% of the gross domestic product of the 19 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Brokerage houses and banks are running the numbers for obvious reasons: They want to know how the war has affected the prospects for European economic growth, emerging markets, trade and the defense industry.
Bottom line: The war over Kosovo cost Western economies relatively little. Trade and oil prices (have) been largely unaffected. Ditto for economic growth in the US. and Europe. There was no massive flight to safe havens in global financial markets. The International Finance Corp.'s index of European emerging stock markets actually jumped 19% while the bombs fell. (...)
As for the 2,000 Serb civilians, including hundreds of children, who have died so that these companies can add a few extra cents to their (Profit and Loss) statements? Well... they are merely the inevitable "collateral damage."
Which is why the civilized world longs for the day when the NATO leaders and the "death merchants"-industrial-financial-media CEOs whose interests these war criminals serve, may end up as inevitable "collateral damage" in God's earthly or heavenly P&L statements. Or courts..." <end>
As we head for the Fourth of July weekend, two Thoughts for the Day are in order, embedded in these quotes:
1. "We will establish ourselves in Palestine whether you like it or
not...You can hasten our arrival or you can equally retard it. It is however better for you to help us so as to avoid our constructive powers being turned into a destructive power which will overthrow the world."
(Chaim Weizmann, Published in "Jüdische Rundschau," No. 4, 1920)
2. "We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The
only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent."
(Jewish Banker Paul Warburg, February 17, 1950, as he testified before the US Senate).