My friend Dana asked a critical question regarding the shocking executive order entitled National Defense Resource Preparedness:
Why now?
My thoughts have not been thoroughly organized yet, but I’m eager to open the discussion. My thought process follows.
We’re gearing up for significant war. Whether we have a Republican or a Democrat for our next president, we’re looking at military action in Iran. This could be relatively contained like our current and previous Middle Eastern wars, or it could activate the treaties held between Iran, China, Russia, Spain, Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia (of which only China and Russia pose serious threat). I don’t know enough to predict how that will play out and who will choose to get involved. They have a variety of treaties in place, but who knows whether they’ll follow them?
We did have to keep an eye on this in Bolivia, though, since Iran has stated that if Israel bombs them then they will declare on the US, and Bolivia has agreed to declare on the US if Iran does (oh, so scary. yawn.). Even if the next phase of engagement is localized to the Middle East, we (both parties!) have deliberately destabilized the entire region. Our troops will be on the ground. We will have a miserable experience. We won’t lose, but we will be miserable.
Meanwhile, our national defense is incredibly, shockingly weak. Our troops are spread thinly across the globe, our local bases are underfunded and our military morale pretty low, and our borders are nonexistent.
This executive order is signed in the same few months as the NDAA that suspends habeas corpus for American citizens and the Trespass bill that prohibits speech and assembly. Both bills had extreme Republican support in Congress and the Senate and both were opposed by only one presidential candidate (the same one who has been shouting for years that our national defense is weak, that we need more bases at home, and that we need our troops securing OUR borders rather than the Afghan-Pakistani border or otherwise out solving other countries’ problems).
This is the most bipartisan time in the entire election cycle. All attention is on the Republican nomination process, and most people are so burnt out by that that they are tuning out all things political.
If you want to pass questionable, controversial, offensive legislation, do it when everyone is outraged/scared (post-9/11 PATRIOT Act) or when everyone is looking elsewhere (now).
War supported by both major parties. Destabilized danger zones supported by both major parties. Totalitarian legislation approved by both major parties.
It doesn’t look good.