We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation ”” work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means ”” have given way to subprime values: “You can have the American dream ”” a house ”” with no money down and no payments for two years.”
That’s why Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous defense of why he did not originally send more troops to Iraq is the mantra of our times: “You go to war with the army you have.” Hey, you march into the future with the country you have ”” not the one that you need, not the one you want, not the best you could have.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.
How could this be? We are a great power. How could we be borrowing money from Singapore? Maybe it’s because Singapore is investing billions of dollars, from its own savings, into infrastructure and scientific research to attract the world’s best talent ”” including Americans.
Friedman could have (and perhaps did) write a very similar article in the late 80s about the Japanese were about to pass us by. Yawn. When people stop trying to immigrate to the US at a rate MANY MANY times higher than the rate of people leaving this country, then I might start to take this doom and gloom seriously. Decreipt airports like JFK (and a bunch of others, I’m not pretending that our airports are fine) are not keeping people from trying to move here. And of course spending more on our military than everyone else (combined? reagrdless, it’s a lot) does impact on our ability to spend elswhere.
And of course Friedman is smart enough to know this yet he just can’t keep himself from waxing nostalgic over the ways that other countries are so great. If they are Tom, why don’t you move their with Streisand and the others who periodically make that threat over “evil” Republican Presidential administrations.
Look at what people do, NOT whay they say.
[blockquote]That’s why Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous defense of why he did not originally send more troops to Iraq is the mantra of our times: “You go to war with the army you have.â€[/blockquote]
Yeah, that sounds great…but it was a LIE. We did not go to war with the army we had and he knew it. First of all, we sent in less troops than we should have. Secondly, Donald Rumsfeld and others were bent on force modernization and that meant a lighter force and a consequent reduction in armor. So, rather than deploy existing armored personnel carriers [M113’s a.k.a. Gavins] we deployed with Humvees [HMMWVs] and light wheeled vehicles like the Stryker [Formerly known as the Interim Armored Vehicle.] Note the word “interim”. The army knew that it was not an adequate vehicle. And, Humvees are basically a really good Jeep. So, we went to war with good Jeeps and interim personnel carriers. Yes, we did have Bradley Fighting Vehicles, but they were less than half of the vehicles used.
Meanwhile, we did not send the M113’s we had. Half of our armored personnel carriers were left out of the fight…so that Rumsfeld’s philosophy of the new “modular army” could be field tested in actual combat.
Ok, fine. It was a mistake. People make mistakes. But, the issue I have is that commanders in the field were asking for armored personnel carriers…for THREE YEARS!!! We had them. We had 700 of them as close as Kuwait and he refused to send them. Instead, we “up-armored” the Jeeps with Kevlar. It didn’t work. Commanders kept asking for armored personnel carriers and Rumsfeld kept saying no. Vehicles like the Gavin can turn in their own radious, which is very useful if you are ambushed in an alley in an urban setting. There are a host of reasons why the Gavin and the Bradley are better options for the war we are fighting and I have provided links to read about it.
I vote for Pres. Bush twice. If I could turn back time…
If you read nothing else, please read this:
http://www.d-n-i.net/grossman/countering_the_insurgency.htm
Teaser: “In weighing the M113 request, senior headquarters also cited cost considerations and the view — prevalent on Capitol Hill — that unarmored trucks and humvees should get first priority for armor plating, these sources said.”
Read more about it here:
http://www.angelfire.com/art/enchanter/guntruck.html
http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,SS_010405_Armor,00.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/050401-stryker-report.htm
http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/docs/2wheels98.pdf
http://www.post-gazette.com/nation/20020320mobilenat4p4.asp
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/iav.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/m113-iraq.htm
http://www.militarycorruption.com/stryker.htm
Friedman is a remarkly bright guy with a clear vision and the ability to express it, whether the subject is the Middle East or modern technology and business. He does not choose to dwell on the issue of the minutae of “how and where we went wrong and who did it” but on what we need to do to have a desirable future and he expresses those in terms of values which this audience should find familiar, education, thrift, and a desire to achieve. All of these “Asian values” (once ours) are values generated from “the family”. The US is in a a strange way in a desirable position at present, all the “stuff” we buy but don’t really need is made somewhere else. If we stop buying it now the impact on our economy is going to be significantly less than it was 25 years ago. If we can convince our children to get an education which allows them to create the products of the future instead of figuring out how to make them for less somewhere else, we might remain a technical and manufacturing power in the world. If we wait until it’s better for the smart and industrious folks to leave, we may never recover. Friedman is right, we can do it, but thus far there is no voice with enough courage to lead us in that direction; its a lot easier (for both parties) to give a handout and buy a vote
An ethic of production, investment, and savings yields better fruit than an ethic of undisciplined consumption. Maturity outclasses childness. Deferred gratification outclasses impulsiveness.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
As for Japan, [#1] Japanese policymakers shot Japan in the foot with an indulgent, politically expedient response to Japan’s banking and real estate debacle of the late 1980s and the 1990s. Instead of taking stern actions now (as the United States did when faced with similar problems in 1989-92), they piled on subsidies and hoped no one would notice the rot. But no one was fooled. This unsound “strategy” loaded a declining population with heavy public debt and left Japanese investors and consumers even more gunshy. This fiasco (arguably the worst policy failure in history) made a huge, lasting difference in Japan’s economic prospects.