A Scary World

If you don’t like horror movies, especially ones based on reality, you might want to avoid these two documentaries:

No End in Sight, about the Iraq War, and Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders.

No End In Sight brings you back to the rushed days leading to the war up through the many mistakes leading to today:

1. the un-or poorly-supported claims of Iraq’s WMDs, capacity to attack the US and Britain, and ties to Al Qaeda, and
2. the (continuing) rosily optimistic assessments of post-invasion Iraq including
1. – low troop levels (US generals estimated several hundred thousand would be needed to secure peace in Iraq)
2. – understaffed US bureaucratic efforts (ORHA staff organized in the days leading to the war were given vacant offices with no staff, no computers, etc.)
3. – crony-ism rather than appointment based on experience/expertise (A Georgetown professor came across a recent student in Baghdad who had been put in charge of traffic for the city of 6million – the student had no civil admin or city planning training)
4. – mismanagement of funds (reconstruction efforts by private US firms charged 5 times what NGOs/US military in the area needed for the same work)
5. – failure to understand the society and culture of Iraq (the Bush administration appointed L. Paul Bremer, a friend of Bush with no military, post-invasion, or Middle-East expertise)
6. – failure to work with Iraqis (one of Bremer’s first decisions was to reverse US military efforts to reconstitute the Iraqi army to support border security and other operations. This action effectively put 500,000 Iraqi men with military training out of work and on the streets)
7. – and more.

The documentary did an excellent job of showing just how things got as bad as they did so quickly. It shows high-level Americans and Iraqis whose knowledge and plans were ignored by certain American politicians (the usual suspects: Bush, but more so Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld). And it leaves us wondering: what now?

My own sober assessment comes in part from one commentator on the film who says something to the effect of, “the Iraqis yearned for democracy, but it is failing them and now they will choose instead a strong man.” And that strong man today is radical shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr (in the news TODAY, guess who heads Iraq’s largest non-official aid organization?) US military and Iraqi gov’t have failed for 5 years to bring security, food, jobs, electricity, etc to Iraqi people. Up steps al-Sadr with hope, religion, and clear displays of force.

But al-Sadr is also walking a tight-rope by seeking legitimate political power in Iraq. This may work in the short-term, and his strong-arm tactics via both his militia and eventually through central gov’t means may actually bring stability to the nation and make Americans believe progress has been made. But so much of his core support base is founded on extremist hatred -even toward fellow Iraqis- that such stability can only be short-lived.

I think many Americans still believe in Bush’s “We’ll bring them Freedom” rhetoric. They think some Iraqi Thomas Jefferson will step forward and forge a strong future for this ancient nation. Many believed Ahmed Chalabi was such a figure, but the truth was that he was either not competent or not interested in being such a figure.

In any case, today it seems that we have three broad strategies: leave soon, stick around indefinitely (“until the job is done”), or create a super-surge and then get out.

It seems painfully obvious that a removal of US forces will create (more) instability in Iraq. People there will have to choose: do we run to the government offices, the police recruiting stations, and take up arms to protect the country – or do we run to militias or insurgents in the hope of gaining violent control of the country. Due mainly to ongoing US failures, the militias/insurgents continue to grow in popularity. Since their appeal is mainly anti-American, perhaps removing the American presence will also eliminate their appeal.

The second plan, endorsed by John McCain, seems hardly workable. I am no expert, but it seems that every step forward in Iraq has been followed by two steps back. All the while, US lives and dollars are being lost.

Another option would be to double or triple US troop numbers in Iraq to the levels the military would like to establish real security. This would mean more US troop deaths and sky-rocket the costs of the war. It would also have to be a short-term project. This war is, quite frankly, bankrupting America. A tiny sliver of the population is getting rich, but the vast majority of us, via increased taxes, cuts in gov’t programs we need, and rising gas prices, are feeling the pinch and will continue to do so for quite some time.

That brings us to our next scary movie: Maxed Out. This documentary, happily filled with background music from Queen: Under Pressure, tells the story of ongoing difficulties of the poor in American, a group populated by amazingly ‘normal’ people – and plenty of folks who were recently pretty well-off.

It is pretty frightening to see just how far in debt we are as individuals and as a nation. For instance, the average US household has over $9,205 in Credit Card debt and pays $1300 per year in INTEREST. That’s like a trip to Hawai’i every year, just in interest payments!

On a broader level, we learn that President Bush’s appointment (see crony-ism above) to help clean up corporate fraud in America, Larry Thompson, was a former director of Prividian Financial Corporation, which had just paid out $400 million for defrauding its customers. We also look at the national debt clock, which currently puts the average family’s portion of the national debt at $90,000.

The major banking corporations are playing a huge role in perpetuating individual debt, through predatory lending practices (either directly via credit card offers or less so by setting up pay-day loan lending companies). An interesting practice they talked about was Credit Card Cos targeting college students – but not similar aged people who were in the work-force. The same corporations also wrote the law enacted by Pres. Bush in 2005 that made it more difficult for American to gain protection under bankruptcy.

One scary revelation was that personal finance guru Suze Orman (who stresses the importance of a high FICO score) has a deal with FICO’s parent company. The documentary also claims that the FICO score has an over 90% inaccuracy rate. Another scary fact:

One of the couples interviewed were Brandie and Will from Tennessee. Will joined the military in the hopes of improving his career. He quickly wound up overseas, for 23 straight months in the National Guard. The work ended up costing him rather than increasing his salary. In the end they had to file bankruptcy.

In Iraq, his life on the line each day, his wife and child at home going through bankruptcy, Will met some private security personnel and found out that they were paid hand over fist more than him and his fellow soldiers.

Along with a lack of funds for soldiers (and equipping them as discussed in the first film) our national debt is squeezing schools, libraries, food programs for the elderly, and reconstruction efforts in New Orleans. It is a scary world. It seems sometimes to only be getting scarier, especially when watching movies like these that are basically tales of “when bad things happen to good people.”

The upshot is that knowledge is power, and these two films deliver lots of knowledge – or at least lots of information that you can turn into knowledge in your own life, your own family, and your community. For me it emphasizes the importance of holding government accountable. The Bush administration got a bit of a free pass after 9/11 and took full advantage of it to play out its ideological dreams of bringing freedom to the Middle East and labeling nay-sayers as pro-terrorist or overly pessimistic. Hopefully the public is seeing the problem with all of this and will not allow four more years of the same.

The second film also underscored for me the importance of living within means. I’m the last person to lecture on that I suppose, as I’ve borrowed hand over fist to fund my education, but aside from that little expense (ok, it’s been a big one) I have done well. But I also know how easy it is to slip, so I will work to both widen my own safety net and to help increase the public safety net so that those who do slip don’t get pulled under permanently. There’s work to be done!