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Looking Towards the Election in 2004
A Summary of Where We Are and Where We've Been

October 28, 2004

It has been a little over three years since the events of September 11th, 2001. Since then, two nations, Afghanistan and Iraq, have had regime changes as a direct result of military action by United States military forces. North Korea is going forward with its nuclear program and Iran appears to be going forward with its own program though only possibly for the peaceful purposes it alleges. Legislation is passed to undermine many of the civil liberties that this country was founded on, none of which would have stopped the original Al Qaeda hijackers if they were enacted before 9/11. The collapse of Enron caused the loss of billions of dollars from people's savings and personal assets. The United States is bearing the brunt of the casualties in the occupation of Iraq. There are fewer jobs now than there were in 2000, and what jobs are replaced are at roughly half the wages of those lost. Jobs by the thousands are being moved to India. America has become a nation driven by fear, anger, and distrust.

Certain events shake our sense of reality. They undermine our feelings of security. As the smoke clears from lower Manhattan, reactions of fear and anger prompt us to action, but we find ourselves distrustful. Some distrust those outside America. As it turned out France and Russia had vested interests in Iraqi oil in findings published by an independent investigation. What's more they had been milking the UN oil for food program, filling the coffers of Saddam while taking payment in promised oil contracts and bribes. In return they would do all they could to lift the embargoes against Saddam's Iraq. Even before this was known, the Bush administration has gone out of its way to block involvement in Iraq to all countries who originally opposed the attack to dislodge Saddam Hussein.

On the flip side many also distrust those who are running America, believing that the current administration is running the country into the ground economically and politically. As a member of the legion who saw first hand the economic collapse of business in tech, banking, and manufacturing, it is not hard to cast an accusing glare at the president whose economic policies and military spending have brought nothing but misery to hundreds of thousands of Americans. Tax breaks to the rich, an atmosphere of unsettled insecurity, skilled workers pulled off their jobs and sent to war overseas- when people and companies don't spend money, support companies lose money. When companies lose money, the bean counters cut costs. The easiest way to cut costs is layoffs. Lose too much money and the company folds. Those companies still alive move jobs overseas where the labor is cheaper to provide the same service for less money. Companies who lose skilled workers called up by the National Guard may not meet product deadlines. When people stop spending, company profits go down and then stock prices go down. When stock prices go down the value of income for banks whose primary income relies on the performance of the markets goes down and you have to cut cost on Wall Street. To cut cost you sell of subsidiaries and lay off people. Laid off people don't spend money. Those in fear of being laid off also don't spend money.

If your company produced a good product but is running out of capital because of general spending cutbacks in the industry, you can sell your company to a larger company. The larger company buys all rights to the product and then to keep costs low, lays off all of the workers of the company just acquired. Your bottom line looks better since you've just cut costs by shedding the money drain that is jobs and you have a product to sell. If your bottom line looks good, your stock price goes up and you can sell off some of it to boost operating capital. In lean times you want to run cheap. And in a heartless industry, you lay off your workers. Laid off workers don't spend money.

As spending drops, service industries are affected. Fewer people buy your services or products and you can adapt by lowering prices or cutting back on your work force. Often times both tactics are used. You can also hire contractors for key jobs- no health benefits, no overhead. And in a jobless economy, you can hire them at half the amount you would have had to hire them before. You shed jobs, you rehire them cheaper. People who make considerably less than they did before, spend less money.

Not even the age-old bastion of academia has been immune to the economic downturn. Endowments that were worth considerable amounts in 2000 can no longer sustain the employment population required to operate schools. The almost unheard of layoffs in academia have manifested with a vengeance in 2004, releasing staff with 10 to 20 years of experience.

So in this election year, those wealthy or fortunate enough to have done well for themselves will not think that a regime change is necessary. And why would they? For them, all the threats are from without- the terrorists, nuclear proliferation, Al Qaeda. For middle class America, the distrust carried is for the current administration, its economic policies that have failed them, and the threat of terrorist attacks from without. Perhaps the single emotion that has marked the actions of the current administration is fear and distrust. Fear of those who would harm us and so we wound ourselves by weakening our own civil liberties. Distrust of others so that policy ostracizes those who oppose us politically.

It is on this last point, the issue of distrust, that I would like to end on. There will no peace so long as there is distrust. The Palestinians and the Israelis have demonstrated the perpetual unproductiveness of this emotion time and time again. The Serbians and the Croatians and the ongoing events in the Congo and Sudan where people feel that the right way to solve a problem is to wipe out one side or another, illustrates that the policy of distrust coupled with violent intolerance will create a never ending cycle of violence. To this point all the policy makers must understand that American troops are in someone else's country. And if we want any hope of getting troops out soon, we need to start trusting the Iraqi troops enough to give them weapons more powerful than AK-47s. Ultimately it is their country that they're fighting for. And if we can't trust them enough to give them the weapons they need to fight the terrorists who are using rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, and high explosives, then American troops will continue to die and we will never be able to leave. As long as the terrorists have more firepower than the local authorities, there will never be a situation where the country will be secure enough for our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, daughters, and sons to come home.

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