(PNS) Editor's Note: A surreal Bush administration proposal for terror trading markets -- floated and then withdrawn after widespread criticism -- has all the markings of a White House obsessed with free-market ideology.
"While cynics might attribute truly murderous intent to the Bush administration, another explanation is the preponderance of extreme market ideology, whereby President Bush and company believe capitalism is the answer -- regardless of the question. It's reflected in the administration's position that Iraq should open its oil industry to foreign investment before a permanent government is in place. In other words, ensure corporate profit-making opportunity first -- then we can discuss democracy."
I was offering this hypothesis in an earlier post. Personally, I think Jeff Milchen is spot on. Interestingly, what passes for "conservatism" in Modern Republican political philosophy, is, in fact, economic liberalism basically espousing laissez faire capitalism. In addition to the tacit assumption that all socio-economic issue 'kinda fix themselves if one just allows the market forces to play out, (a socioeconomic darwinism, strictly 19th Century), is the conviction that the wisdom of the market is the best overarching reference for all issues.
Pure zealotry of assertion aside, the DARPA's concept is flawed in the same way that Stock Marketeering is flawed. While the conceptualizations involved are languaged in terms of "scientific cause and effects and measurements statistically quantified" with pseudo-objectification derived from the subjective, speculative assignment of numerical values, market phenomena are, in the final analyis, subjective, social, and marked by herd mentality. This is one way the stock market can "boom" when the economy does not warrant it, and can tank when real indicators are healthy. Also, this is why the word on a sheet of paper from a "reputable" source can generate panic selling or other activities, regardless of rootedness in reality. This social reality is maintained in an infosphere which can levitate to a plane highly abstracted from real-world referants. What's worse is that as a social phenomena, self-fulfilling prophecies can and do emerge. Real money and investment follow otherwise vacuous speculation. And those who are aware of and control the mechanics of the supporting infosphere can actually influence desired effects, i.e. the herd bolting in one direction or another.
The danger is, finally, that the process and results of the "Terrorist Market", though thoroughly reductionist in scope and method, would be construed as having more importance than they deserve, and thereby generate undue influence in the realms of decision making and policy.
This article was the result of a collaborative effort in BLOGASTAN. It took me awhile to read through it, but I remember most of the incidents discussed.
Number 40 is my favorite:
40) God told Bush to invade Iraq.
"Not long after the September 11 attacks, neoconservative high priest Norman Podhoretz wrote: "One hears that Bush, who entered the White House without a clear sense of what he wanted to do there, now feels there was a purpose behind his election all along; as a born-again Christian, it is said, he believes he was chosen by God to eradicate the evil of terrorism from the world."
No, he really believes it, or so he would like us to think. The Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz that Bush made the following pronouncement during a recent meeting between the two: "God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."
"I take personal responsibility for everything I say, absolutely," the president said. Previously, he let CIA Director George Tenet and a national security aide take blame for the controversy.
"National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has also come under criticism in connection with the speech and events leading to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Bush strongly defended his national security adviser, saying she was an "honest, fabulous person" and the United States was lucky to have her in government."
And of course, in the true Republican style of dogmatic assertion in the face of contrary facts:
In the Rose Garden session with reporters, Mr. Bush said that his three successive tax cuts had enhanced the nation's economic security while the war in Iraq was contributing to stability in the Middle East and a safer world.
Well, thank God for that. I guess his fingers were getting tired from pointing them elsewhere.
"A main focus of the news conference was the chaotic situation in Iraq, where U.S. troops are dying daily three months after major combat operations were declared over, where the hunt for weapons of mass destruction is so far fruitless, and where Saddam Hussein remains at large."
However:
"Bush also denied exaggerating the Iraqi threat in the runup to the war as some Democrats have charged and said his decision to go to war was based on "good, sound intelligence" that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction."
What might not immediately meet the eye on this issue is its underpinnings in Repubulican political philosophy, which is, at root, built on an absolute worship of captitalism's virtues. Capitalism has a many virtues as an economic engine. However, it has few as a system of morality. Modern Republicanism has as its solution laissez faire capitalism for all governmental problems. Here we find moral outrage because a group, lead by Republican political appointees, applied its intrinsic enfatuation with all things "market" to an area of endeavor for which it is ontologically unsuited. The sad thing is that it probably never occurred to the Wolfowitz/Poindexter circle that there would be any problem with this until the opposition leadership made the point.
Imagine an entire nation totally converted to the principles of Star Trek's Ferenghi. That is the tacit crusade of modern Republicanism.
Excerpts from the article:
"There is something very sick about it," a clearly angry Boxer said, adding that those responsible should be fired.
Wolfowitz said he'd only learned about the program Tuesday morning and added that the department will "find out exactly how this happened."
The program, called the Futures Markets Applied to Prediction (FutureMAP), would have involved investors betting small amounts of money that a particular event -- a terrorist attack or assassination -- would happen.
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