Destroying America from Within

If a hostile nation were trying to infiltrate the government and destroy it from the inside out, well, they would be hard-pressed to do a better job than our current and former leaders have done. America and its policymakers have been asleep at the wheel for over two decades now. If they are not awakened very soon, America may find itself permanently stuck in a ditch.

One of the first actions a hostile nation might take to destroy our country would be to drive up the debt, making the nation subservient and vulnerable to the actions of others. Unfortunately, this is already the case, all through our own doing.

America’s national debt recently surpassed the $10 trillion mark. In 1971 the national debt was a mere $389 billion. Since Sept. 2007, the national debt has risen by $3.81 billion per day. Since 2003 we have added at least $500 billion to the nation’s debt each year. When unfunded obligations such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are taken into account the total is an astronomical $59.1 trillion. Now, 100 percent of our new debt is financed by foreign nations such as China, Japan and the United Kingdom.

Another excellent way for a hostile nation to take the country down would be to destroy our ability to remain self sufficient, which is exactly what has happened with the advent of globalization. Since 1978 America has sold 16,613 of its best wealth producing companies to foreign competitors in what can be dubbed “The Great American Sell Off.” Some of those companies are household names that have been vital to America’s economic and national security in the past. Companies such as Colgate-Palmolive Co., Citigroup, Century Steel Inc. and AP Petroleum LLC. have all slipped into foreign hands recently.

Hostile nations could try and pin the U.S. down with ill-conceived wars with little or no exit strategy, which basically sums up the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan. America has already allocated $800 billion for the un-winnable war in Iraq. That is roughly $12 billion per month. To make matters worse, some $9 billion in taxpayer money is simply unaccounted for in the desert nation. Another $1 billion in equipment is missing - vanished into the thin, arid desert air. The total estimated cost of the war in Iraq is $3 trillion, with Afghanistan included that number balloons to between five and seven trillion. What’s more, the economic cost pales in comparison to the 4,188 American men and women that have lost their lives bravely and proudly serving their country.

In addition to the Great American Sell Off, the U.S. is allowing its companies to outsource jobs to nation’s with lower wage rates, little environmental protections and very few labor laws. American companies exploit the cheap labor of other nations instead of utilizing the resources we have at home. If an enemy wanted to destroy America’s economy they would probably provide shields in the tax codes rewarding companies that outsource, much as it is now.

All these policy failures by our leaders have allowed other nations to gain competitive advantages on the U.S. economically. Many hostile nations now have an entire arsenal of economic bullets in the form of gargantuan sovereign wealth funds that are poised to strike at any time, buying any American company they want, causing more wounds to the nation’s ailing economy. With so few U.S. companies remaining, we have now become hard pressed to support ourselves.

Corrected to reflect national debt of $389 billion in 1970.

Front Page Photo by johngiovanni1 - Flickr © Some rights reserved

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