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Build
a Maginot Line in the Sky (and other ways Bush can balance
isolationism with trillion dollar tax cuts and a "War on Terrorism")
November
10, 2001
by Ted Westervelt
There may be a war going on, but President Bush still needs
to do government on the cheap. He wants to pull back from
what he sees as over-extensions of the United States in the
global community and limit the role of the federal government
in our lives so that he can deliver on trillion-dollar tax
cuts and billion-dollar corporate tax breaks that are coming
down the pike from the Republican House
Here's a sneak preview of how the plan fits together.
First, in the battle for homeland security, sacrifice individual
rights whenever possible. It is far cheaper to allow the justice
department freer reign in electronic eavesdropping, and to
turn a blind eye toward racial profiling and torture in this
time of war than to spend money on efforts to provide real
security. For instance, assigning government forces the full
time responsibility of providing comprehensive federal security
at airports is just too darn cumbersome. It works real well
for the White House, but, gosh darn it - those government
employees won't show up when it snows.
Second, support the same array of undemocratic regimes in
the middle east that your father did. Democracy is a dangerous
tool in the hands of the unenlightened. If average Floridians
can't be trusted to do the right thing, how can we trust Iraqis
or Afghanis? Hopefully, the array of strongmen we support
can take care of their own problems with a little bit of taxpayer
money here and there. Cheney's Energy Task Force endorses
this plan wholeheartedly. As long as they promise to keep
the oil spigot "on" and control their populations, they can't
be all bad - right? Never mind that every major war in the
20th century included at least one undemocratic aggressor.
This is the 21st century now.
Third, get all money out of Washington before liberals can
spend it. It is much more effective to support a 15 year retroactive
tax cut that will net corporations millions of extra dollars
to be spent as their CEOs decide. For Example, should IBM
get the 1.5 billion dollars they would net in this plan, America
will reap enormous benefits and be much better off in ways
that are, well, very difficult to enumerate.
Finally, continue to build a "missile defense shield". This
will allow us to continue to cut funding to wasteful international
programs. For instance we could continue to curtail US involvement
in securing and dismantling an aging Russian nuclear arsenal
that numbers on the tens of thousands of weapons. Some may
call it a "Maginot Line in the Sky"or "The Great Wall of Bush",
but we will be able to hide comfortably from the poor disenfranchised
poor barbarians should they obtain nuclear weapons.
Huddled behind our "missile shield" we can continue to pay
off kings and dictators in the middle east to control their
populations and ensure our oil flow, hand over giant amounts
of cash to our corporate friends, and erode Constitutional
rights just enough to allow us to keep a sharp eye on our
own population.
What a wonderful world this will be.
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