by Nathan Wada

Created on: March 16, 2008

Superlatives as a general rule come up short.

So while the fascist, the oppressive, the constricting, the antiquated, the somnambulant, and the plain boneheaded policies of many extant governments persistently give rise to the consensus among those soliciting independence that "We have hit rock bottom. There can no descent from the status quo;" that premise alone - as one individual with debatable governmental policies of his own once proffered - is an irresponsible and dangerous "misunderestimation." The current prevailing economic and geopolitical realities dictate that independence cannot be seen as a panacea for struggling, underdeveloped countries.

George Walker Bush, the founder and proprietor of "misunderestimate," recently spoke for the American people and endorsed the move to independence by Kosovo. So while the Diplomat-in-Chief proffered that the transition "presents an opportunity to move beyond the conflicts of the past and toward a future of freedom and stability and peace," not even the giddy frisson wrought by the dawn of liberty for the citizens of the planet's newest nation could distract even the most audaciously hopeful freedom-lover from the very prominent and immediate issues that Kosovo will face.

To wit, no one - even while ideologically approbating the liberation of Kosovo - should, and I borrow poetic license from the World's Most Powerful Man here, misvaluate, misconsider, misdetermine, or misunderestimate the titanic challenges that loom on freedom's horizon for the Kosovars. Many of these challenges are coefficient to actual survival.

As is usually the case and as is the case here, of immediate and primary importance are the fiscal realities that face Kosovo and conceivably every nation angling for a new flag. Referred to by the New York Times as a "desperately poor" nation with a 60 percent unemployment rate and a $250 average monthly wage, Kosovo would seem to the pragmatist as a nation that had merely succeeded in liberating itself from the prospect of economic upward mobility.

To continue along this line of thought, Maslow's hierarchy would argue that many aspiring nations jump the gun and skip a few of the peremptory deficiency needs by soliciting the independence pursuant to their growth needs. Nutritive sustenance and sufficient caloric intakes as negotiated by gainful employment exist as necessary precursors to successful nation-building and it's a stretch to allow for any new society, no matter how rhetorically optimistic, to

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