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posted 01-Mar-04
Reprinted from May 2002 EWR
Part 2, June 2002 EWR
WAR FORECAST, Part One
On page 1 of the previous EWR, I explained that federal officials have become dangerously emotional about the war. Among other things, they have given carte blanche for allies to do whatever they please, as long as the people killed by the allies have been accused of terrorism.
On March 2nd, a Macedonian police unit gunned down seven Arab men on a country lane. The Macedonian police say the Arabs were terrorists, but the FBI found no evidence of it, and the WALL STREET JOURNAL reports "western diplomats say the incident appears to have been staged by the Macedonian government in a bid to cover up a local settling of scores by cloaking it with the war on terror."1
This is one small example of the fruit of Washington's emotionalism. One of the larger examples is the March 21st announcement that prisoners will be detained with or without charges for the duration of the war. And, on March 28th, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said prisoners will be kept in prison even if they are found not guilty.2
US officials have often said we should not be surprised if the war lasts decades, so if you were an enemy soldier, how likely would you be to raise a white flag if you knew surrender meant an automatic life prison sentence?
If you want to know what it is like to face an enemy who will not surrender, talk with a GI who was in the Pacific during the Second World War.
But, the worst blunder concerns nuclear weapons.
Nukes Made Routine
For a half century, US nuclear policy has been "no first use" except in the case of a massive Soviet tank attack across Germany that could not be stopped in any other way. After nuclear weapons were acquired by the governments of Russia (1949), England (1952), France (1960) and China (1961), it was understood that if someone used nuclear weapons in a situation that was not a last ditch stand, the green light would be on for using nukes routinely.
In March, the Bush administration's new Nuclear Posture Review was leaked to the press, and it gives the green light to using nukes routinely.
Russia and China were already on the nuclear targeting list, and the new Review adds Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria, plus a new criteria for using the weapons: "in the event of surprising military developments." Not a last ditch stand, just developments that are "surprising."
Colin Powell spent three days trying to convince the world that the no-first-use policy was unaltered, then on March 13th, George Bush pulled the rug out from under him, saying, "all options are on the table."
General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, clarified even further saying nuclear weapons could be used "in the case this country or our friends or allies were attacked with weapons of mass destruction, be they nuclear, biological, chemical or, for that matter, high explosives."3
It is hard to exaggerate the importance of this. We have no way to know who has nuclear weapons and who does not. If Washington nukes someone, this someone may have the ability to nuke us back.
Notice all seven target nations are part of the New Axis covered by this newsletter since 1996. All seven have now been threatened with nuclear attack whenever they do something US officials regard as "surprising."
This is a vast widening of the war, both in geographic scope and gravity. The only safeguard against routine use of nukes has been erased. Washington has become a hotbed of emotion, the biggest loose cannon in history.
If you were Iran or any other member of the New Axis and found yourself under a threat like that, what would you do?
My guess is you would face the fact that use of nuclear weapons may soon become routine. You would launch a crash program to buy or build your own as quickly as possible, then you would use them in a pre-emptive strike on Washington before US officials could deem one of your actions "surprising."
How Will The War End?
Unless you were born yesterday, you have noticed everything organized by governments looks like the work of Lucy and Ethel. This war is no exception.
Questions on everyone's mind are, where will the war lead? How will it end? When will it end?
Will it end?
For several years before it began, I gave speeches attempting to answer these questions, and my 1999 book THE THOUSAND YEAR WAR4 contains a lot about the subject. I have been thinking about the book and those speeches, and can see no reason to change my forecast. This is not to say I am sure this forecast will turn out correct, it's just the most likely, I give it a 90% probability. Here is the story. It may sound scary at first, but read with an open mind, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
Caught in the Crossfire
We all know what it feels like to be an American opening the mailbox to find a letter from the IRS.
Fear. Stomach churning. Hands trembling.
Imagine what it is like to be a Libyan, Sudanese or Iranian peering out the kitchen window as a US guided missile cruiser comes over the horizon.
You and I are not the only people who fear the federal government. President Reagan: "The government is not the solution, it's the problem." September 11th means people in other countries have begun to do something about this problem, and you and I and all those who died that day have been caught in the crossfire, exactly as this newsletter has predicted for more than ten years.
The Military Coup
To know where we are going it helps to know where we have been.
The September 11th attack was not unprovoked, the federal government has been meddling in foreign countries for more than a hundred years.
The government's first big imperialist move outside North America was the Spanish-American War and conquest of the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century. In conquering the Philippines, the federal government killed about 220,000 Filipino men, women and children.5 This began the worldwide spread of hatred toward the US government.
But let's go back even further. Where did the federal government come from in the first place?
There was an America before there was a federal government. Until the creation of the government, each state was a separate country, connected in a loose alliance, a "firm league of friendship" drafted in 1777. Under these "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union between the States," each state retained "its sovereignty, freedom, and independence."
Some thought the Articles of Confederation had a few problems, so at the Annapolis Convention in 1786, state representatives agreed to another convention in 1787 to iron out the kinks.
James Madison and other "federalists" believed the state governments were too democratic. They thought majority rule was becoming mob rule, and democracy must be neutralized to protect liberty.
They saw the 1787 convention as their chance. Their plan was to add a new layer of government on top of the states, to paralyze the states. In the FEDERALIST PAPERS, Madison, Hamilton and Jay explained their goal was to create competing centers of power that would neutralize each other, allowing liberty to grow.
Note the federalist goal was liberty, not democracy. I have been studying the literature of the American Revolution for more than 30 years and have never seen any mention of an attempt to create democracy. It was always liberty, which is a different thing entirely than majority rule.
The main problem faced by Madison and the other federalists was that America's military forces might remain loyal to the state governments and wipe out the new federal government. This was solved by asking the highly popular General George Washington to be the first president.
In other words, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was really a disguised military coup, and it worked. The Articles of Confederation were thrown out and replaced by the Constitution, which created the federal government. Under the leadership of General Washington, the armed forces swung behind this new government.
Patrick Henry and the other anti-federalists tried to halt creation of the new government, but failed. They feared this central government would grow too large and powerful to control.
The anti-federalists went to their graves surprised never to have witnessed the dire consequences they had predicted. Under the Constitution's "checks and balances," this new government of America was one of the most limited the world had ever seen.
For a while. Four score and seven years later, Abraham Lincoln was hard at work dismantling what Jefferson had called "the chains of the Constitution." Under Lincoln, the government began to grow wildly, and it has never stopped.
It has attracted power seekers like flies to honey.
Feed-'em-and-shoot-'em
It took a while, but the federalists' good intentions eventually did pave the road to hell.
Not content with meddling in the lives of Americans - and massacring the American Indians - the federal behemoth emerged from the Civil War hungry for new lands to conquer. Spain and the Philippines were the first targets, but, unfortunately, not the last to feel the terrible swift sword wielded by Uncle Sam. US troops were sent into foreign conflicts no less than 1886 times during the 20th century.
How would Americans feel about the government of, say, Pakistan, if armed Pakistani troops landed in America in support of the democrats against the republicans? This has been US foreign policy for more than a century, hidden behind a smokescreen of humanitarian aid. Because the US government feeds a man's children, he is expected to overlook that it shot his brother.
Americans are raised in government-controlled schools, so they understand little of this feed-'em-and-shoot-'em foreign policy.
Only four score years after Lincoln, the tiny US government had grown into the most powerful ever known. The president was king of the world, surpassing the wildest dreams of Napoleon, Caesar and Charlemagne.
And, the wildest nightmares of the anti-federalists.
Each person killed by Uncle Sam's terrible swift sword has had family and friends, and they are not happy. Decade after decade, the federal government's enemies have accumulated, and today they surely number in the hundreds of millions.
The Insurrection Begins
It was only a matter of time until the federal government's victims acquired the means to strike back. September 11th brought the beginning of what we can call the Great Retaliation.
Essentially, the "war on terrorism" is a civil war. The US government is the world's only superpower, and it meddles in nearly every country; its empire is the whole globe. Like the South in the 1860s, much of the world is sick of it, and they want the federal government to go away and leave them alone. September 11th was Fort Sumter, Chapter Two.
Writing in USA TODAY, columnist Andrea Stone points out, "But if Muslims in the Middle East dislike the United States, so do sizable percentages of Catholics in Latin America, Protestants in Europe and Buddhists in Asia."7
Where will the Great Retaliation lead? I think a return to the Articles of Confederation. Here's why.
Governments Come And Go
A country and its government are not the same thing. The government of Britain is not Britain. The government of Italy is not Italy. And, the government of America is not America.
Governments come and go. They are wiped out by plague, invasion, rebellion, or simple corruption and sloth.
Governments in China have been destroyed dozens of times, but China remains. France is now on its fifth republic since 1830, but always, no matter how high the flames in the French capital, France has remained.
Out of the more than 220 national governments on this planet, I doubt there are a dozen that have never been wrecked.
I'm often asked, if it is the government they hate, why did they hit the World Trade Center?
They began trying to chase the federal government out of their homelands in 1968 with the killing of Senator Robert Kennedy. For 33 years Americans paid no attention. Now we're paying attention.
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Yet, all the countries remain.
In my opinion, the most likely outcome of the "war on terrorism" will be that the federal government will follow into oblivion the thousands of other governments that have disappeared over the ages.
I think some highly intelligent and resourceful individual in Kazakhstan, Morocco or Indonesia will buy or steal a truckload of suitcase-size 20-kiloton atomic bombs. He will hide several in a bale of marijuana or a shipping container, and pay a smuggler to sneak them into the US.
One morning Americans will awaken to find they no longer have a federal government, just a group of smoking craters where Washington, D.C. once was.
Governments come and go.
We will never know who did it. All we will know is that the NEW YORK TIMES will have received an anonymous letter saying, "Get out of the Islamic world and stay out, and don't try to set up another government, or I will blow that one away, too."
Americans will immediately rise up, stiffen their resolve, and demand the creation of a new central government.
Four million federal employees cannot go into hiding, so the new government will try to open offices in Buzzardbreath, Wyoming.
Then Buzzardbreath will become a smoking crater.
The next day, each state government will pass a resolution saying they stand solidly for creation of a third federal government, but NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard! "This state legislature believes the federal government should be reconstructed, but, due to the extreme risk to innocent bystanders, the new government will not be permitted to have any office or facility of any kind in this state."
Suddenly Americans will realize they can no longer have a federal government.
Then they will realize they don't need one.
The states will call a convention at which they will revive the Articles of Confederation. The federal government's debts, responsibilities and assets, including Social Security and the liabilities for federal bonds, will be parceled out among the states. The armed forces will be distributed among the fifty national guards and brought home to protect us, not foreign dictators.
When will the big blast happen? Impossible to say. Maybe 20 years, maybe 20 minutes.
The Shadow Government
How realistic is this forecast that Washington will be blown away? Am I being alarmist?
Washington does not think so. Ever since September 11th, they have keep about 100 top officials on "bunker duty," living and working underground 24 hours per day away from their families in secret fortifications far from Washington.
According to the WASHINGTON POST, the official name for this shadow government is the "Continuity of Government Plan, or COG;" its first mission in case of a "disabling blow to Washington" would be "to prevent collapse of essential government services."
The POST says the COG was set up in response to the possibility of a nuclear attack on Washington because, according to one official, a nuclear detonation in the capital "would be 'game over.' "8
On March 11th, the WALL STREET JOURNAL page A18 ran an editorial by Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute saying, "We must now contemplate the possibility of a surprise attack taking out all of Washington, leaving nobody in line for the presidency and a situation of chaos, with dozens, perhaps jumping up to say, 'I'm in charge here.' The best option is to include [state] governors" in the line of succession.
Despite propaganda to the contrary, nuclear weapons are low tech. They were invented more than a half-century ago, long before anyone could manufacture color televisions, microwave ovens or CDs.
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"A CIA report on the security of the Russian nuclear arsenal stated, ' Weapons-grade and weapons-usable nuclear materials have been stolen from Russian institutes.' Reports surfaced that the US government has deployed sensors around Washington and at other choke points that attempt to detect a nuclear weapon before it is detonated." --Richard Klass, DEFENSE NEWS, 7 Apr 02, p.15
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Any bright high school physics student with a billionaire backer can probably build a truckload.
Or buy them on the black market. In 1995, this newsletter began warning that Russian accounting and inventory controls on nuclear weapons were so awful there was no way to know what had been stolen. This is still the case. Recently, Barton Gellman of the WASHINGTON POST reported that a US official said of Russian assurances that all nuclear weapons are safe, "We don't know with any confidence what has gone missing, and neither do they."9
Will Attacks Continue?
Summarizing what we have covered so far, the federal government spent the entire 20th century sticking its nose into other people's business, and now these people have begun to retaliate in a big way. The outcome of the war will likely be the nuclear demise of the federal government and a return to what the anti-federalists wanted, the Articles of Confederation.
In the grand scheme of things, the defeat and destruction of the federal government will not amount to much. There will be a period of economic turmoil that won't be fun, but I think that within two years after the explosions, our daily lives will be back to pre-9-11. America will endure, and prosper, and no one except the arms merchants will miss Uncle Sam.
But, one might say, even if Washington is gone, won't Saddam Hussein and other cutthroats continue hitting America just for spite?
I am sure they would like to, but I am equally sure they will be too busy. As shown on the map on page one, and explained in the 2/02 EWR, Washington backs 94 regimes that are led by crooks and tyrants. With Washington and its support gone, opponents of these regimes will see this as their opportunity to rise up. Washington's end will trigger upheaval throughout the former US empire.
It is highly likely that a few hours after Buzzardbreath disappears, civil wars will break out in Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Bosnia, Macedonia, Pakistan and all over the Persian Gulf including Saudi Arabia. These outbreaks will be quickly followed by chaos from west Africa to the South China Sea. A lot of US-backed tyrants will die. The world political matrix will collapse, and Saddam Hussein and his ilk will have their hands full just trying to survive the chaos. Some tyrants may be killed simply by accident.
How To Avoid The Big Blast
The big blast can be avoided if Americans face up to the challenge and return to the Articles of Confederation now, voluntarily. This would enable us to avert most of the economic and financial disruption, as well as the eyesore of those radioactive craters.
We should simply admit defeat, dismantle the federal government, then go on with our lives. The hardest part would be in swallowing our pride.
Or maybe the way I should say this is, we will return to what Patrick Henry wanted - the Articles of Confederation - the only question is, will we do it the easy way or the hard way?
What do I mean by hard?
To measure the pain, let's use a scale of one to ten, with the Civil War representing a ten. The period 1929-1945 - the Great Depression and Second World War - I'd judge a seven, and the 1982 recession, a two.
As long as you are not in Washington DC (or Buzzardbreath) the day of the big blast, I think the hard way will be a five.
The easy way, a two.
Which one is most likely? I give the hard way an 85% probability, and the easy way, 5%. The other 10% is the possibility the government will win the war.
Notice that the people who live in Washington DC are the ones who have the most to gain from a voluntary return to the Articles of Confederation. They might be unemployed for a while, but this is the worst that would happen to them.
Effect On Your Investments
How will the big blast affect the financial industry?
Stocks and bonds will instantly plunge, creating the greatest buying opportunity in history.
Then these markets, plus banks, currency markets and every other part of the financial industry, will shut down for weeks. Not forever, just weeks.
A year or two later, everything will be back to normal. Investors will have figured out that the federal government is not necessary and probably never was. Those who bought during the panic will be fabulously wealthy.
In fact, life for almost everyone in America will be better than now. Freed from the burden of the federal bureaucracy and its global military empire, Americans will have a lot more money, safety and liberty.
Summary: A Sigh of Relief
Washington is the most arrogant and vain city since ancient Rome, and Americans have been caught in the crossfire between the federal government and its millions of enemies.
Ever since the Spanish-American War in 1898, the thinking behind Washington's foreign policy has resembled Abbot and Costello doing Who's on First? This war is no exception, and Washington's chance of surviving it cannot be greater than ten percent.
Governments come and go, and this one is about to go.
There was an America before there was a federal government, and there will be an America long after the federal government has been defeated and destroyed.
The biggest winners will be the American people, because Patrick Henry and his anti-federalists turned out to be right, the federal government was a bad idea. Giving the green light to routine use of nukes is the most dangerous thing any government has ever done.
Indeed, as the war drags on, federal security controls on Americans will grow ever more Draconian, to the point that when the big blast finally happens, I think most Americans will breathe a sigh of relief. Already, walking into an airport feels like walking into Nazi Germany.
Never let anyone tell you history is irrelevant. The next time you are at a gathering and someone asks how the war will end, you might suggest a 90% probability America will return to the Articles of Confederation, with no central government at all. You will have a rapt audience.
END
Part 2, June 2002 EWR
1 "US Embassy Asks...", Wall Street Journal, 22 Mar 02.
2"Rumsfeld Backs Plan...," New York Times, 29 Mar 02.
3 "What's New?" The Economist, 16 Mar 02, p.35.
4 $17.95 + $3.90 shipping & handling from Henry Madison Research, Box 84908, Phoenix, AZ 85071. 800-509-5400.
5 WALL STREET JOURNAL, "Death Toll," Nov. 19, 1997, p.1, and THE US AND THE PHILIPPINES, PBS documentary.
6 U.S. Navy official web site, and "Presidents Have A History...," by L. Gordon Crovitz, Wall Street Journal, January 15, 1987, p.24.
7 USA TODAY, 27 Feb 02.
8 "Shadow Government...," Washington Post, 1 Mar 02
9 "Fears Prompt...," Washington Post, 3 Mar 02
All Back Isses are availabe in printable, searchable PDF in the EWR Archive.
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