Biggs' essay - and Joe's reply

[Biggsk@aol.com]

Joe,

Thanks very much for the words of praise for my essay.   There's a lot we can 
all still learn about regarding what happened in the past in terms of what 
can happen in our future.   He who fails to learn from history is indeed 
doomed to repeat it!

<< Greg, I like what you wrote because it made  me feel very uncomfortable.  
While I agree with your analysis I do not  agree with some of your 
conclusions - mainly that we are weak-minded and  will forget this.   In 
addition to impacting  the entire country and world (for commercial reasons 
that I will not go  into), it will cause a  great impact on our economy.  
Unfortunately, many businesses will fail  because of these events.
 I believe that this act will stay in America's face for a long time.  It  
took over
 10 years to build the WTC, so we will have at least that much time on our 
reminder clock. >>

Joe, I truly hope I am wrong.  But so far events in our country have proven 
me right.  There is nowhere NEAR happening in our country now that compares 
with what happened in 1941 after December 7th!  Not even close - in terms of 
what the people themselves are doing.

I already mentioned the 18-25 year olds that are NOT going to armed forces 
recruiting offices - while older men are!  In 1941 men of all ages swarmed 
them!  We are going to need trained troops as this wil be a long haul war - 
and there will be casulaties that will need replacing.  The Army has about 1 
million men, must most are not combat troops per se.  Many are support troops 
that do not do any actual fighting.  The bulk fo the casualites come in the 
combat units. and the cutbacks of the last eight years have gutted that 
strength.  We had 16 divisions in 1992 - we have 10 now.

But the bottom line that fails here is that our country was deliberately and 
brutally attacked last Tuesday in an action that took every bit as much 
planning, training and coordination as what happened at Pearl harbor - and 
the 18-25 year olds don't seem to get it!

Secondly, the casualties will, sadly, come, and come hard as this is joined 
over time.  The American people, historically, have never had the stomach for 
the long protracted war - and I can cite case after case as proof!

This is why governments wage propoganda campaigns internally - to keep the 
people reminded as to who did what to us and keep the spirit of support 
alive.  I don't see that as yet and we are probably too cynical to fall for 
it anymore - thanks to past actions of our government! (I am pretty cynical 
myself I'm afraid!)

Thus, what will be the motivator for the war if it goes long and hard?  The 
WTC will stay on our minds for some time, but two years from now, unless the 
media keeps those images blasting on our TV screens reminding us why we are 
doing what we're doing, I fear that most people will be more concerned that 
their 401 K is down, or that their baseball team is losing.  I hope I am 
wrong...I really do.  New York may never lose that memory - and I hope they 
never do!

Sadly, if other terrorist attacks happen here over time, the memory may stay 
with us - because it is our own soil being assaulted.  That is indeed far 
different from body counts in Vietnam, in terms of keeping public support.  
People tend to fight quite visciously for their own soil!

As for the economy, war does NOT to anything good for the economy in the long 
term.  The defense industry is too insular for enough of the surge in 
activity to reach all areas of it.  Look at the arms race before and during 
World War 1 - it bankrupted every nation that was involved, and lead to the 
Great Depression as no one had a decent post-war econ policy in place.  We 
survived World War 2 economically (but barely) largely thanks to our own 
restructuring of past-war events from the first war AND by the fact that we 
sold War Bonds to help pay for it!  Most other nations were flat broke!

War Bonds are needed here by the way - or else we will suffer the drain in 
finances from the government that lead to the terrible economy of the 
mid-1970's (which were exacerbated by Nixon's terrible wage-price freeze, and 
Arab oil cutoffs) - all of which combined with the bills from Vietnam - $100 
Million per day - to smack us pretty hard.

If they wiselt sell war bonds - buy them!

Joe  - I loved your Trojan horse analogy by the way!  It is perfect!

Greg Biggs/CVC