Is The Financial Meltdown Of 2008 George Bush’s Stalingrad?

If you think George Bush is a man with an oil problem then think again because his problem is nothing compared to the one Adolph Hitler faced in the spring of 1942. Sadly, George Bush appears to believe he can solve his problem with the failed and discredited solution Hitler tried, only to achieve a spectacular, and in the end, catastrophic and fatal failure.

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union along a 2,000 mile front with over 2,000,000 troops. For the first three months the Axis powers rolled up the Russian forces, and, by the beginning of fall, appeared ready to finish them off. For a number of reasons, too complex to review in this brief article, the German invasion stalled; and by the end of November, the German army was frozen in place in front of Moscow, literally, when temperatures dropped to -40 Fahrenheit. Then on December 9, 1941, the Russians counter attacked with a massive army that hit with devastating power. The German army had no idea what was coming, crumbled under the weight and retreated, suffering terrible losses as it went.

The Russians now attacked anywhere they could along the entire front, but by spring were exhausted and unable to continue. The Germans, for their part, took stock of the state of their army, which had suffered over 600,000 casualties, and reviewed three strategic choices. First, which no one seriously considered, was to pack up and go home. Second, was to renew the attack on Moscow. Third, was to attack south toward the oil fields at Baku on the Caspian Sea, today located in Azerbaijan. Hitler chose the third option, Plan Blue. His army had been beaten up pretty badly the previous year, he reasoned, but so had the Russians. He figured that, with what remained of his army augmented by allied troops, he could capture the oil fields for himself, and deny the oil to the Russians, thus securing energy independence along with political, economic and military supremacy for Germany.
It didn’t work and to understand why we need to look at some Russian geography. The headwaters of the Don River are about two hundred miles south of Moscow. From there it flows in a southeastern direction for about five hundred miles, and turns sharply to the southwest toward the Black Sea. The Volga, farther to the east, flows in a southwestern direction for several hundred miles then turns east to the Caspian Sea. Thus the two rivers flow toward each other, and come within sixty miles until they both turn and go their separate ways. In June 1942, the Germans strung out a defensive line along the Don, then across the land bridge to the Volga, anchoring it on a city on the mighty Volga, Stalingrad. Then they sent another army toward Baku and the oil fields with the Caucus Mountains and Georgia to the south protecting its right flank.

While Germany and Russia dumped trainloads of soldiers into the Stalingrad meat grinder, the Germans raced to Baku. They didn’t make it. They got about fifty miles west of Groznyy in Chechnya, and, ironically, ran out of gas. Meanwhile, back in Stalingrad, on November 19, 1942, the Russians launched another massive surprise attack north and south of Stalingrad, surrounded and eventually annihilated over 300,000 German and Romanian troops. When the Russians began to pour through the enormous hole torn in the German line, the German army heading toward Baku turned around and fled for its life, reaching the Black Sea and safety with about a week to spare. This left the Germans with their first strategic option, pack up and go home; which they did, fighting the Russians and the Allies tenaciously and ferociously every inch of the way for the next two and one-half years.

Today, George Bush, the greatest American military genius since George McClelland, has exhausted armies in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect western oil supplies, a huge fleet in the Persian Gulf menacing Iran, and, for full measure, troops in Georgia prowling north, looking for a fight while Russian soldiers are prowling south. And all this to protect a western built pipeline that ships oil from the Baku fields to the Black Sea, bypassing Russia. And he has done all this with money borrowed from foreigners, principally the Chinese, but including the Russians. Now the American financial markets are collapsing, and the credit markets are freezing, and George Bush says he needs another $700 billion in addition to the $1 trillion he has already spent on his wars. And, of course, he will have to borrow this from the Chinese and others because there is no way the American people can pay for this with higher taxes.

So, it looks like it may time for the Americans to go home. The only question is, will they go quietly or fighting every inch of the way?