Third World America - Arianna Huffington [59]
In October 2009, the unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent, a twenty-six-year high.132 But the $787 billion stimulus package was going to bring that down. It has, but not by much. Turns out, the unemployment crisis is also much worse than we thought it would be.
When BP first applied to operate the Deepwater Horizon rig, it submitted plans to the Minerals Management Service stating that “no significant adverse [environmental] impacts are expected” and predicting that a spill was an “unlikely event.”133 Of course, as we’ve seen, the historic disaster is much worse than they thought it would be.
Perhaps we should start calling this the age of “Much Worse Than We Thought It Would Be.” Or, in honor of the standard excuse we hear in these situations, the “Who Could Have Known?” era.
See if this sounds familiar: An ambitious and risky undertaking is carried out with hubris and features the weeding-out of anyone who raises alarm bells, little to no transparency, an oversight system in which no central authority is accountable, and the deliberate manufacturing of ambiguity and complexity so that if—when—it all falls to pieces, the “Who Could Have Known?” defense can be trotted out.
Am I describing Iraq? The subprime mortgage market? The Enron-led financial scandals of the early 2000s? The BP oil spill? The Upper Big Branch mine disaster? The Lehman Brothers and AIG–led financial meltdown of 2008?
The correct answer: All of the above.
When you look at the elements that were crucial to the creation of each of these debacles of the past decade, it’s amazing how much they all have in common. And not just in how they began but in how they ended: with those responsible being amazed at what happened, because … who could have known?
Well, I’m amazed at the amazement, because each of these disasters was entirely predictable. And, indeed, every one of them was predicted. But those who rang the alarm bells were aggressively ignored, and we let those responsible get away with the “Who Could Have Known?” excuse (“the struggle of memory against forgetting” continues).
Let’s start with Iraq, an unnecessary war that has cost America’s parents the lives of more than 4,300 sons and daughters, and American taxpayers three-quarters of a trillion dollars and counting (not to mention the future cost of $422 billion to $717 billion to care for American veterans through healthcare and disability coverage)—money desperately needed for some long-overdue nation rebuilding here at home.134, 135 And for what? As the Center for American Progress’s “Iraq War Ledger” puts it: “there is simply no conceivable calculus by which Operation Iraqi Freedom can be judged to have been a successful or worthwhile policy.136 The war was intended to show the extent of America’s power. It succeeded only in showing its limits.”
In the run-up to the war, General Eric Shinseki, a heroic combat officer who had risen to become the army’s chief of staff, told Congress that a successful occupation of Iraq would require “several hundred thousand” troops on the ground.137 U.S. deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz told Congress he found that “hard to imagine.”138 But when defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s attempt to win the war on the cheap failed, everyone acted shocked. Who could have known?
The Bush administration also told the public that the rebuilding of Iraq would cost taxpayers no more than $1.7 billion.139 To say the administration massively underestimated would be a massive understatement.140 The New York Times described our reconstruction efforts there as “an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.”141 Who could have known?
At