American foreign policy, shackled

In the ever-desperate effort to keep you distracted, the corporate media are forced to scrape quite deep today, telling you that the husband of an obscure senator had sex with a prostitute in a Troy, Mich, motel. What on earth don’t they want you to know?

Things like the erosion of American latitude in foreign policy — some might even call it sovereignty. And it’s all our doing, whether through our thoughtless votes at the ballot box or our votes in what we buy and how we live.

We’re supposedly committed to a war on terror, or a struggle against "Islamic fascism," to use the "conservative" phrase. But who is the biggest sponsor of terror? Our friends, the Saudis. This news comes not from some conspiracy site but from the Bush Treasury department, which reported quietly that Saudi Arabia remains the largest funder of al Qaeda and other extremists.

Meanwhile, nations are talking about boycotting the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics to protest China’s horrendous human rights record. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel apparently will not be there. You can bet President Bush, the leader of the Free World and a man who pledged to support democracy across the globe, will attend.

These are powerful contradictions. Consider that in 1980, the United States boycotted the entire Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This was an affront to what was seen as a superpower, and an empire that in its efforts to survive might well have miscalculated into a general, even nuclear war. Yet Jimmy Carter (!) had no problem telling the Sovs where to put their torch.

Of course, in 1980, the United States was also a net creditor nation, the most powerful manufacturing and exporting nation on the globe, and had a federal deficit that was tiny by today’s standards. Conspiracy theorists may look at today’s whackadoodle foreign policy and see "House and Bush, House of Saud" etc. But it really comes down to fairly simple economics.

Saudi Arabia controls not only the world’s largest oil reserves (a closely hidden secret, hmmmm), but essentially leads OPEC. Unless America lets the Saudis do their thing, we don’t get to drive our SUVs out to the McMansions in the exurbs. So inconvenient truths about most 9/11 murderers being Saudis, the huge Saudi contribution to the Iraqi insurgency, and, now, the continued Saudi funding of al Queta et al — well, we just have to suck it up. Hey, look over there at the hooker!

Similarly, we are deeply in hock to what the "conservatives" used to call the Red Chinese. We’ve been borrowing some $600 billion a year from China to fuel an economy that buys Wal-Marts full of junk but doesn’t make much any more. We export the scrap metal from our closed factories in those railroad/ship containers you see headed east. Debt is the deciding factor now, to pay for tax cuts for the rich, no-bid contracts for political friends and, especially, to fund a war of choice that has distracted us from getting the real al Queda.

Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and Professor Linda Bilmes have conducted the most credible study of the Iraq war’s cost: $3 trillion. Much of that cost has come from borrowing from China. In addition, "China, Singapore and many Persian Gulf emirates have become lenders of last resort for troubled Wall Street banks, plowing in billions of dollars to shore up Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and other firms that burned their fingers on subprime mortgages." China also holds huge stashes of our rapidly devaluing dollars, giving it a powerful vote in American monetary policy. Look, look over there, Britney’s without panties! Lindsay’s drunk again!

The result of our decisions, our profligacy and waste, our inattention to history, is that America’s foreign policy is more constrained than at any time since we entered the world stage, and for unprecedented reasons. Most Americans don’t even realize it. Watch them vote for more of the same in November, because "we gotta get tough with them terrorists and stay the course."

It’s also worth noting that American political and corporate elites are very comfortable with the status quo, especially China, which has shown that an authoritarian government can easily coexist with "free market capitalism." What a convenient arrangement that would be here, if we can just keep eroding the Constitution and keeping Americans stupid and fearful. Already we can make torture national policy while talking about letting freedom ring.

Hope we don’t go in debt for cute blond teens in peril on cable TV. Otherwise, some people might wake up.