What If? Part 2

Almost seven years ago, I blogged about the possibility that a foreign power could install their agent as a leader in our politics, and then speculated on what that politician might do to weaken and eventually defeat our country.  I reread that blog recently and decided to elaborate on the possibility,. updating it with recent events.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

What If?

I am not a believer in elaborate conspiracy theories. When the far left wackos tried to make the case that George Bush was intentionally ruining America, I laughed. I also laughed when the far right wackos accused Bill Clinton of outlandish intent. I am confident that Clinton would have pulled the trigger when he had Osama in the crosshairs had he known what was to come. Bush was not a conservative president. His decision to push for TARP1 was a disappointment. Both of these presidents made mistakes. I believe that each came to work each day with the intent of doing good. Neither approached their day thinking of how they could screw up the country. Intentions were pure. Approach, strategies, and sometime their decisions were flawed.

I am having an increasingly difficult time maintaining this mindset under the current presidency. Obama’s programs and decisions are very difficult to explain. While I would agree that he is doing nothing that he did not communicate during the campaigns, the totality of his spending and certain decisions that border on the irrational make his intent hard to square with the well being of America. So if his intent is not to improve America, what is it? Let me pose a hypothetical.

Let’s start with Gulf War 1, Desert Storm. Despite Hussein’s threats of how, if invaded, he would turn the country red with American blood, the truth was far different. The Iraqi army was decimated. The short-lived war was a clinic in proper battle strategy, planning and execution. The American losses were in the low hundreds (even lower except for a lucky SCUD strike), while Iraqi losses were in the hundreds of thousands. Trenches dug to slow American armor became mass graves for the Iraqi army. Aircraft pounded, softened and demoralized a poorly equipped Iraqi army that surrendered in mass. It was a turkey shoot for the better trained and equipped coalition forces.

Militant Islamic, such as Osama bin Laden and his fanatic ilk, certainly would have notice the vastly superior military might of the USA. It no doubt became apparent that battling America head on would never be a successful strategy. So without a military option, they would only have individual terrorist acts as a tool to defeat America. America is an expansive country with millions of people. They would never be able to inflict significant damage to American civilians on American turf. Even if they tried this approach, the resilience of the American people would have risen to defeat them. They were left with no feasible strategy to defeat America through violence. So what if they moved in a completely different direction, such as attacking the US economy? How could that be done? After all, America’s military might is a product of its economic might. Just as American defeated the USSR during the cold war, if you cause the collapse of the American economy, you defeat the military. You would also demoralize the American people as their wealth and way of lives evaporate.

The attacks of 9/11 were definitely terrorist attacks, but what if the true intent was not to generate terror, but instead to collapse the US economy? The twin towers were the hub of our capitalist system. The actual damage from the attacks did close our markets for a week. The architect of 9/11 may have thought their attack was enough to cripple the US economy. However the behemoth economy, largest in the world, could recover. While personal wealth did suffer, (and continues to), the markets rebounded and began a slow recovery. The 9/11 terrorists had vastly underestimated what would be required to kill our economy. So they went back to the drawing board.

Next they decided on a play taken from the communist playbook. The USSR had long worked to place their agents into high positions within the US government. The CIA had Aldridge Ames, and there were others. During the cold war, rumors of communist congressmen and other high ranking officials abounded. McCarthyism was a product of these rumors. The damage caused by a single communist agent in a prominent position would be massive. If Islamic terrorists could recruit a rising star in American politics that also happens to be Muslim, they would have a weapon that would potentially bring down the US economy. What if Barrack Obama was that politician they found and recruited?

Beyond their wildest dreams, this Chicago community organizer gains an important ally in the mainstream media and begins a climb to the state house, the Senate, and finally the Presidency. The potential of this attacker could be greater that a nuclear bomb in every major US city. As president, the strategy is developed. First, relieve the pressure overseas by pulling troops out of the country the terrorist use as home base. Second, disembowel the intelligence community by removing every tool (Patriot Act, Guantanamo) that has proven successful in identifying Al Qaeda members and their plots since the attacks of 9/11. And finally, take the kill shot by running the US debt load to unsupportable levels. With a quadrupling of the yearly deficit and a doubling of the overall debt, this one act has the potential of bankrupting US credit. If we cannot get loans, we cannot fund the military. Without the military we are venerable to many outside enemies.

And we're back.

Looking back on the past 7 years and bringing actual events into the theory makes the speculation more compelling.  The debt and deficits have continued to climb and led to an Obama-inspired forced austerity policy (sequestration) that severely crippled the military. Our military is in sad shape with army, navy and air force personnel and hardware at historic low levels. 

And worse, our economy has never fully recovered from 9/11.  Executive policies that seem intended to restrict business growth have done just that.  Without growth, a solution to our debt and deficit problems is elusive. Without growth, our military will continue to become weaker. Score one for the enemy.  America is weakened with little hope for strengthening in the short term.  

What would the enemy do next?  Here is a checklist:

• Remove US military presence from countries used by the enemy to train, plan, organize and direct terrorism.  Allow the enemy safe haven.
• Polarize the American citizenry.  Turn blacks against whites against Hispanics against gays against republicans against democrats against the rich and the poor.  Make it virtually impossible for these synthetic divisions to allow unification against a common purpose.
• Disarm the populace.  Buy up all surplus ammunition. A disarmed population has little protection from its own government.
• Create safe passages into the country for enemies of our country. Open the borders and halt immigration enforcement.  Accept unvetted refugees from countries that share ideology with the enemy. 
• Intimidate the domestic police force. Make local law enforcement difficult and more hazardous.
• Use political correctness to provide cover for obvious harmful actions and policies. Shame common sense solutions such as profiling those who are most likely to be our enemies by claiming this is not reflective of American values. Encourage Americans to "become better" and treat our enemies with respect and tolerance.
• Never name the enemy as this might serve to galvanize an opposition.
• Give the enemy cover inside America. When the enemy has success, blame the NRA, guns, homophobia, xenophobia or Americans.
• Gut the ability of federal investigators to proactively identify enemies within US borders using fairness and American values as arguments.
• Sign a treaty with the central country of your enemy's ideology. Fund their efforts and clear the way for development of weapons of mass destruction.

If an inside agent could accomplish this, they just might ensure the defeat of America.