Why the United States Will Lose this War......

Why the United States Will Lose this War by Paul GloverNew York City and the Yankees deserve to win, for thesake of justice. Our flag and our people and music arebeautiful and sexy-- we deserve to win. And ourmilitary is the most powerful sonofabitch on theplanet. But the United States will lose this war and spoileverybody's fun, and here's why. Thanks to movies and books everyone remembers PearlHarbor-- how we were jumped by Japs and how ourrighteous anger became ruthless military force, and webeat half the world. That was America 60 years ago. That America was leanand rich. Today the United States is profoundly weakwithin. We've used up most domestic natural resourcesand have built tall brittle cities ready to collapsewithout being attacked by foreign psychos. Todaymaking global war is like screaming at your dog whilethe house burns. The problem is simple-- while fighting a major warabroad you've got to keep the home front alive too,right? Can't be done in 2001. The United States willlose this war because, among other things, during thepast sixty years we've burned 80% of our originaldomestic oil reserves and now depend on tankers fromabroad. Nearly all our strategic industrial metals areimported. Sixty years ago most Americans lived in comparativelyenergy-efficient cities connected by railways. Todaynearly half our population are suburbanites helplesswithout their cars. Home heating has overshot regionalsupplies (coal, hydro, wind) to rely on a continentalgrid that's already stretched to the breaking point.Today the average house is bigger, with five timesmore light bulbs and many more appliances. Pumpingdomestic water has become a huge fuel load. Speaking of water, it's pretty necessary for growingfood, which soldiers and their families will demand.Feed my family or I won't fight. Sixty years agoplentiful groundwater made drought more regional andremediable. Today the Midwest breadbasket, with fargreater population, has significantly emptied theOglalla aquifer, and rainfall patterns are generallymore unreliable. Sixty years ago, despite Dust Bowldrought, topsoil nationally was generally deeper.Since then it's been scraped and scalded by massivecombines and poisons. And while there are now twice asmany hungry American mouths, there remains a fractionof our former arable land per capita. Worse, remember that back in 1941 most Americans knewhow to grow and preserve food and most had access togarden space. They even knew how to hunt food, andthere was plenty to shoot at. Endless forests teemedwith wildlife. Today just 70% of forest cover and atrace of wetlands remain. During the Big War, Americans were neighbors. City orfarm, they knew the people around them. They relied oneach other for child care and housework when sick ormourning. Family doctors even visited homes, for smallfees. Today these informal safety networks have beenvastly dissolved, while government has beendismantling official nets. When everyone was poor,people pulled together. Today unequal scarcity islikelier to inspire robbery, drug sales and rioting. Sixty years ago, Americans knew how to make stuff andrepair it. There was a manufacturing and labor baseready for war or peace. Today, Americans likelier knowhow to sell gifts and process data. Shoes come fromAsia. We even had real money in 1941, backed by hard silverand hard goods. Dollars today are backed byspeculation, rusting industry and $5.5 trillionnational debt. Sixty years ago, farmers and smallbusinesses could get reasonable credit from bankersthey knew well. Today money moves mechanically fromsmall towns to big cities, and from there overseas.Sixty years ago, most workers did essential work andsaved money for real needs. Today we're a franticconsumer economy, earning pretend money principallydoing pretend jobs to meet pretend needs. Now the bad news. America is more militarilyvulnerable than ever. Our 103 nuclear power plants aregiant landmines each capable of killing millions whenpunched by a commuter jet. Cities like Los Angeles canbe clobbered more completely than was New York, byblasting certain freeway intersections. Slam the rightelectric substations with crowbars to shut down powergrids for months. Explode reservoirs to sink cities.Enemies don't need armies or missiles any more. And face it, when enough people hate America enough,putting the National Guard on every street corner isnot going to prevent every attempt to sprayschoolyards with machine guns. There will never beenough video cameras and bomb-sniffing dogs to catchevery container of poison gas or anthrax thrown intosubways or churches. Terror? We ain't seen nothingyet. Finally, we'll lose this war because an article likethis will be unpleasant to read and thus will bedismissed as unpatriotic. Rather than make difficultchanges, it's easier to censor people in the name ofnational security. Some un-Americans would require usto follow the wartime dictates of authorities who areoil executives rather than statesmen. When thathappens we're really screwed, because a public scaredof speaking out will be a public scared of speaking atall. And a silent nation, timid as elevator riders,will be even easier to infiltrate and attack. Maybe that's what some prefer-- realizing thatpermanent war justifies permanent unquestioneddominance by military and industrial interests. An empire can do a lot of damage as it flails deeperinto quicksand. Wrapping ourselves in flags does notpull us free. Rather, to win this war we'll have to rebuild ourcities, consolidate suburbs into villages,superinsulate and re-tool our housing, revive regionalagriculture, decentralize enterprise and finance,revive rail, plug in the wind and sun, establishnonprofit safety nets, and get more excited aboutcreating than consuming. And when we've done so, we'll have built an Americafundamentally independent of foreign resources. Whenthat is accomplished, we'll have broken the spiral ofoppression and hatred abroad, to welcome visitors whowill respect us and be happy to return home. We won'tneed war. We'll provide a grand and decent future forour kids.