In the councils of government,
we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether
sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the
disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Their
goals may or may not coincide with the best interests of the American people.
Think of the divergence of interests, for example, between the grunts who
are actually fighting this war, who have been eating sand and spilling their
blood in the desert, and
the power brokers who fought like crazy to make the war happen and are
profiteering from it every step of the way."
- Bob
Herbert, "Spoils of War," The New York Times, April 10, 2003
If the ability to anticipate future dangers for the nation is the mark of a truly
great president then Dwight D. Eisenhower is the greatest president of the XX century.
Dwight Eisenhower's presidency is probably better remembered less for what he did
than for what he said while heading for the exit. In a nationally televised address
on January 17, 1961, only four days before John F. Kennedy's inaugural, Eisenhower
warned of the dangers of "undue influence" exerted by the "military-industrial complex."
But it's more then undue influences, it's actually a grave threat to democracy.
The danger is that MIC inevitably transforms the state into some variant of
totalitarian state, such an "inverted
totalitarism". It's not exactly "WAR IS PEACE. Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength", but close enough.
Eisenhower cautioned that maintaining a large, permanent military establishment
was "new in the American experience," and suggested that an "engaged citizenry"
offered the only effective defense against the "misplaced power" of the military-industrial
lobby. But the problem with his warning was that after the second World War to dismantle
permanent military establishment was an impossible task. In a sense the key result
of the second World War was the establishment of the rule of military industrial
complex. Here is a relevant quote from his famous speech:
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have
been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance
liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for
less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable
to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict
upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict
now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings.
We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless
in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises
to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for,
not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those
which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the
burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only
thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward
permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic,
great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular
and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.
A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic
programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and
applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising
in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration:
the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between
the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage
-- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance
between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the
nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national
welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it
eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government
have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well,
in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly
arise. I mention two only.
IV.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms
must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may
be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any
of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War
II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments
industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make
swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national
defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of
vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are
directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military
security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry
is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political,
even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of
the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development.
Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources
and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and
will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or
democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and
knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial
and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that
security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military
posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized,
complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at
the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed
by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same
fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and
scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research.
Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually
a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are
now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment,
project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to
be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should,
we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could
itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these
and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system
-- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
V.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we
peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid
the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience,
the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of
our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual
heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become
the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
VI.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this
world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful
fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the
conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our
moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past
frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.
Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect
and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that
I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense
of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness
of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization
which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish
I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our
ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen,
I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along
that road.
The term MIC ("Military-Industrial Complex") is related to the phenomena that
is defined by the term corporatismand the term Predator State. In a way this is just a more politically
correct way to describe corporatism as a social system. The term corporatism
is linked to Mussolini Italy and quite often is associated with the term "Italian
fascism". As such this association instantly makes the discussion more emotional
and defensive.
Like the term corporatism, the term "Military-Industrial Complex"
is used to denote a mutation of state in which the dominant power belong to the
large corporations allied with the government including but not limited to a block
between the military and the industrial producers of military equipment and their
lobbyists in Congress. In a sense, the key result of WWII was that Nazi Germany
and its allies lost but corporatism as a political movement they represented, actually
won.
Alliance of government (both Congress and presidential administration) and corporate
interests is the defining feature of this new form of political regime. Eisenhower
initially wrote "military-industrial-congressional complex" (the term, which is
of course is more precise as corporatism is a marriage of state and large corporations,
but also more divisive), but was moved by strong advice to omit "congressional."
We can see his political abilities and instincts of this great president in action
in his final speech. It became a hit and people sited it, without understanding
the depth and the real meaning of the warning.
The term is easily extended to any group of corporations for which a significant
part of revenue comes from the government contracts or which depend from the expansion
of market by government force (especially foreign expansion). In this sense
we can talk about financial
complex as another candidate for close alliance with government along
with military industrial complex.
No matter what set of industries are the key members of the alliance with government,
the press is controlled by the same players. The net result is a super-aggressive
(we are the dominant player and you suckers should not stand on our way),
jingoistic foreign policy oriented on acquiring new
and protecting old markets. In this sense one of the defining features
of such a regime is seeking/protecting/opening foreign markets using direct military
power (aka invasions) or threat of thereof.
On the other hand it can be viewed as an implementation of
Military Keynesianism:
a government economic policy in which the government devotes large amounts of spending
to the military in an effort to increase economic growth and the speed of technological
advancement (via dual use technologies). Many fundamental technologies such as computers,
large scale integral circuits, Internet, GPS, etc are the net results of adoption
and enhancement of former military-oriented technologies by civilian sector.
As for aggressive foreign policy there is one important difference between "predator
states" and fascist regimes: extreme, rabid nationalism is typical only for fascist
regimes, but is not a defining feature of "predator states". But aggressive foreign
policy is and that's why the term invented by Jamie Galbraith ( “the predator state”)
in his book bearing that title. And aggressive foreign policy is an immanent feature
of the regime -- it almost always fight some kind of war. In this sense, it is a
more precise term for such a state then more politically correct term "military-industrial
complex". Related, but more narrow term is disaster capitalism introduced
by Naomi Klein which explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically.
Her Shock Doctrine book is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies
have come to dominate the world -- through the brutal exploitation of disaster-shocked
people and countries.
Of course, both the American society and the U.S. armaments industry today are
different then it was when Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell speech (Eisenhower's
Farewell Address to the Nation) famously warned Americans to beware the "military-industrial
complex." See also
The Farewell Address 50 Years Later. The USA now is the world's greatest producer
and exporter of arms on the planet, spend more on armed forces than all other nations
combined -- while going deeply into debt to do so. It also stations over 500,000
troops, spies, contractors, dependents, etc. on more than 737 bases around the world
in 130 countries (even this is not a complete count) at a cost of near 100 billions
a year. The 2008 Pentagon inventory includes 190,000 troops in 46 nations
and territories, and 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S.
territories. In just Japan, we have 99,295 people who are either members of US forces
or are closely connected to US. The only purpose is to provide control over as many
nations as possible. Funny but among other thing the Pentagon also maintain 234
golf courses around the world, 70 Lear Jet airplanes for generals and admirals,
and a ski resort in the Bavarian Alps.
Statistics compiled by the Federation of American Scientists analyzed by Gore
Vidal show 201 military operations initiated by the U.S. against others between
the end of WWII and 9/11 - none of which directly resulted in the creation of a
democracy. These included Iran (1953, 1979), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1959-present),
Congo (1960), Brazil (1964), Indonesia (1965), Vietnam (1961-73), Laos (1961-73),
Cambodia (1969-73), Greece (1967-73), Chile (1973), Afghanistan (1979-present),
El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua (1980s), Iraq (1991-present), Panama (1989),
Grenada (1983). (The Korean War is a notable positive exception.)
Per Johnson, Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former
CIA director Gates made it clear that U.S. aid to the mujaheddin began six months
prior to the Soviet invasion, and helped to provoke it (with the direct goal of
seeking Vietnam for Soviet troops). So the USA by-and-large created, organized
and financed global Islamic fundamentalist forces, which at some point became less
controllable from the former center.
A recent 'Newsweek' article also pointed out waste in the Pentagon - Secretary
Gates estimates there are 30 levels between himself and line officers, and expects
by 2020 for the U.S. to have 'only' 20X China's number of advanced stealth fighters;
other researchers recently found 530 deputy assistant secretaries of defense, compared
to 78 in 1960. See also
Dismantling the Empire .
Despite of economic decline, of may be because of it,
New Militarism
is now pandemic, supported by both parties and aggressively used by Republican Party
to maintain the unity of fragile coalition of rag tag groups (see
Understanding Mayberry Machiavellians).
Neo-conservative ideology still dominates foreign policy and its essence (spread
of "liberal democracy" with a shadow goal of defending/promoting own geo-strategical
interests and first of all access to cheap oil) is not that different from the old
Soviets militarism, eager to spread or "defend" the blessings of "Scientific
Socialism (Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks and Poles remember those attempts all
too well).
While far from historic high (reached during World War II, when it represented
20% of the civilian workforce) US military still employs 2.2 million people, or
about 2% of the civilian workforce. So they represent a society within a society.
If we add Department of Energy and military contractors like
Lockheed Martin, Northrop
Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, United Technologies. L-3
Communications, etc as well as servicing firms such as Halliburton/KBR/Blackwater/DynCorp
we can add to this figure another million people. That means that all-in all at
least three million US citizen directly or indirectly works for military-industrial
complex. But what is more important that military-industrial
complex spends up to 50% of all taxes:
In Fiscal Year 1999 the Department of Defense awarded $118 billion to contractors
for goods and services. The "Big Three" in the defense industry -- Lockheed
Martin, Boeing and Raytheon -- alone accounted for 26% of all defense contracts
in FY'99.
In fiscal year 2003 the United States Government will spend on the military
more than all the rest of the countries on Earth combined. Current expenditures
are 437 billion and our past obligations are 339 billion, this equals 776 billion.
46% of our Taxes go to the Military Industrial Complex:
http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm.This
figure doesn't even begin to account for all of the off-budget, black projects,
homeland security nor the 40+ billion the United States Government will spend
on intelligence in 2003. -- Mark Elsis Lovearth, Jan. 8, 2002
Abstracting from the ideological bent, totalitarian regimes like USSR (or China)
can be viewed as examples of MIC dominance in the form of merger with the state,
a variant of George Orwell's "doublespeak" future depicted in his novel "1984".
And the dissolution of the USSR is directly related to the destruction of the economy
imposed by militarily industrial complex (see
Are We Going Down Like the Soviets World) Still, China, which uses the same
bankrupt ideological doctrine with political life dominated by Communist Party,
managed to survive and even economically prosper.
Sheldon Wolin, who taught the history of political philosophy from Plato to the
present to Berkeley and Princeton graduate students, introduced the term "inverted
totalitarism", which probably can be better called neo-bolshevism. He
thinks that the latter is based on two forces:
Corporate power, which is in charge of managed democracy. Wolin argues,
"The privatization of public services and functions manifests the steady evolution
of corporate power into a political form, into an
integral, even dominant partner with the state. It marks the
transformation of American politics and its political culture from a system
in which democratic practices and values were, if not defining, at least major
contributing elements, to one where the remaining
democratic elements of the state and its populist programs are being systematically
dismantled." This campaign has largely succeeded. "Democracy
represented a challenge to the status quo, today it has become adjusted to the
status quo."
The military-industrial complex, which is in charge of projecting power
abroad (Empire building). The official U.S. defense budget for fiscal year
2008 is $623 billion; the next closest national military budget is China's at
$65 billion, according to the Central Intelligence Agency. Foreign military
operations literally force democracy to change its nature: "In order to cope
with the imperial contingencies of foreign war and occupation," according to
Wolin:
"democracy will alter its character, not only by assuming new behaviors
abroad (e.g., ruthlessness, indifference to suffering, disregard of local
norms, the inequalities in ruling a subject population)
but also by operating on revised, power-expansive
assumptions at home.
It will, more often than not, try to manipulate
the public rather than engage its members in deliberation. It will demand
greater powers and broader discretion in their use ('state secrets'), a
tighter control over society's resources, more summary methods of justice,
and less patience for legalities, opposition, and clamor for socioeconomic
reforms."
"Among the factors that have promoted inverted totalitarianism are the practice
and psychology of advertising and the rule of "market forces" in many other
contexts than markets, continuous technological advances that encourage elaborate
fantasies (computer games, virtual avatars, space travel), the penetration of
mass media communication and propaganda into every household in the country,
and the total co-optation of the universities. Among the commonplace fables
of our society are hero worship and tales of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness,
beauty through surgery, action measured in nanoseconds, and a dream-laden culture
of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose adepts are prone to fantasies
because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge.
Masters of this world are masters of images and their manipulation.
Wolin reminds us that the image of Adolf Hitler flying to Nuremberg in 1934
that opens Leni Riefenstahl's classic film "Triumph of the Will" was repeated
on May 1, 2003, with President George Bush's apparent landing of a Navy warplane
on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to proclaim "Mission Accomplished"
in Iraq."
In short neo-bolshevism is combination of militarism prompted by military
industrial complex and managed democracy which is promoted by media. It is a totalitarism
minus charismatic leader, single official ruling party, concentration camps, official
ideology and constant political mobilization via government propaganda.
Wolin writes, "Our thesis is this: it is possible for a form of totalitarianism,
different from the classical one, to evolve from a putatively 'strong democracy'
instead of a 'failed' one." His understanding of democracy is classical but
also populist, anti-elitist and only slightly represented in the Constitution
of the United States. "Democracy," he writes, "is
about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their
lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes
and needs." It depends on the existence of a demos -- "a politically
engaged and empowered citizenry, one that voted, deliberated, and occupied all
branches of public office." Wolin argues that to the extent the United States
on occasion came close to genuine democracy, it was because its citizens struggled
against and momentarily defeated the elitism that was written into the Constitution.
"No working man or ordinary farmer or shopkeeper," Wolin points out, "helped
to write the Constitution." He argues, "The American political system was not
born a democracy, but born with a bias against democracy. It was constructed
by those who were either skeptical about democracy or hostile to it. Democratic
advance proved to be slow, uphill, forever incomplete. The republic existed
for three-quarters of a century before formal slavery was ended; another hundred
years before black Americans were assured of their voting rights. Only in the
twentieth century were women guaranteed the vote and trade unions the right
to bargain collectively. In none of these instances has victory been complete:
women still lack full equality, racism persists, and the destruction of the
remnants of trade unions remains a goal of corporate strategies. Far from being
innate, democracy in America has gone against the grain, against the very forms
by which the political and economic power of the country has been and continues
to be ordered." Wolin can easily control his enthusiasm for James Madison, the
primary author of the Constitution, and he sees the New Deal as perhaps the
only period of American history in which rule by a true demos prevailed.
To reduce a complex argument to its bare bones, since the Depression, the
twin forces of managed democracy and Superpower have opened the way for something
new under the sun: "inverted totalitarianism," a form every bit as totalistic
as the classical version but one based on internalized co-optation, the appearance
of freedom, political disengagement rather than mass mobilization, and relying
more on "private media" than on public agencies to disseminate propaganda that
reinforces the official version of events. It is inverted because it does not
require the use of coercion, police power and a messianic ideology as in the
Nazi, Fascist and Stalinist versions (although note that the United States has
the highest percentage of its citizens in prison -- 751 per 100,000 people --
of any nation on Earth). According to Wolin, inverted totalitarianism has "emerged
imperceptibly, unpremeditatedly, and in seeming unbroken continuity with the
nation's political traditions."
The genius of our inverted totalitarian system "lies in wielding total power
without appearing to, without establishing concentration camps, or enforcing
ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as
they remain ineffectual. A demotion in the status and stature of the 'sovereign
people' to patient subjects is symptomatic of systemic change, from democracy
as a method of 'popularizing' power to democracy as a brand name for a product
marketable at home and marketable abroad. The new system, inverted totalitarianism,
is one that professes the opposite of what, in fact, it is. The United States
has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to
be suppressed."
As radio personality Don Imus once said of top news chiefs, "They write the
news for their friends." In view of existing evidence the quote should probably
be modified into "They write the news for their government handlers." As
Oscar Wilde's once noted: "The truth is seldom pure and never simple".
Despite continuing disinformation campaign, press still commands enormous influence
and some level of respect because there is no alternative to press in modern society.
Still the modern joke that people who write to the editor of the mainstream newspaper
a letter sighing it with "Respectfully ..." should consult a psychiatrist, has some
grain of truth in it. Respect for editors of newspapers might be going the way of
dinosaurs.
Politically growth of power of media-military-industrial-complex correlates with
growth of neoliberal political doctrine and dramatic increase on inequality within
Western societies including the USA. It naturally leads to the establishment of
"National Security State" state, militarization of police and introduction
of total surveillance over the citizens under the pretext of fighting against terrorists.
In his book "Brave New World Order" (Orbis Books, 1992, paper), Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer
identified seven characteristics of a National Security State
[4]:
The first characteristic of a National Security State is that the military
is the highest authority. In a National Security State the military not
only guarantees the security of the state against all internal and external
enemies, it has enough power to determine the overall direction of the society.
In a National Security State the military exerts important influence over political,
economic, as well as military affairs.
A second defining feature of a National Security State is that political
democracy and democratic elections are viewed with suspicion, contempt, or in
terms of political expediency. National Security States often maintain an
appearance of democracy. However, ultimate power rests with the military or
within a broader National Security Establishment.
A third characteristic of a National Security State is that the military
and related sectors wield substantial political and economic power. They
do so in the context of an ideology which stresses that 'freedom" and "development"
are possible only when capital is concentrated in the hands of elites.
A fourth feature of a National Security State is its obsession with enemies.
There are enemies of the state everywhere. Defending against external and/or
internal enemies becomes a leading preoccupation of the state, a distorting
factor in the economy, and a major source of national identity and purpose.
A fifth ideological foundation of a National Security State is that the
enemies of the state are cunning and ruthless. Therefore, any means used
to destroy or control these enemies is justified.
A sixth characteristic of a National Security State is that it restricts
public debate and limits popular participation through secrecy or intimidation.
Authentic democracy depends on participation of the people. National Security
States limit such participation in a number of ways: They sow fear and thereby
narrow the range of public debate; they restrict and distort information; and
they define policies in secret and implement those policies through covert channels
and clandestine activities. The state justifies such actions through rhetorical
pleas of "higher purpose" and vague appeals to "national security."
Finally, the church is expected to mobilize its financial, ideological,
and theological resources in service to the National Security State.
All those features were also typical for Bolsheviks regime in the USSR, so the
term "neo-bolshevism" is also applicable.
"All democracies turn into
dictatorships - but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator,
whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the
general population goes along with the idea... That's the issue that I've
been exploring: How did the Republic turn into the Empire ... and how does
a democracy become a dictatorship? "
The recommendation 'Go read Andrew Bacevich's "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism"
' expresses by one of the reader is naive. This is a brainwashing exercise, not
attempt to analyze the situation and should be judged as such. Like most
mouthpiece of propaganda war of MIC, this guy knows perfectly well from which
side his bread is buttered. He is just trying to justify his salary...
An excellent example of how we get drawn into the military option.
No matter how disastrously Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan turn out to be
for us, there are never any real consequences to those who suck us in.
Those who ought to exercise a proper caution lose their courage fearing
that they will get blamed for the human costs of civil wars in other countries
while knowing that as long as they show proper machismo there will be little
criticism of their sending fellow citizens (younger ones) to become casualties
in futile endeavors in foreign lands.
P BrandMemphis, TN
Dear Mr. Keller,
Go read Andrew Bacevich's "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism".
If that doesn't change your mind, read his other books on American interventionism
and militarism. Finally, if that doesn't change your mind, then volunteer
yourself and your children to fight in Syria.
If you want to help us "get over" Iraq perhaps you should go there and work
as a volunteer in the Shite slums of Bagdad to make it into a Jeffersonian
democracy. Good luck with that.
oneill.gw, Silver Spring Md.
Are your kids in the military Keller. Would you be okay if a relative
or dear friend was killed in action there? I doubt it
Bob Brown, NYC
I can't agree with much of what you write. Nor do I think we should act
militarily.
1. We all tend to make excuses for people we like. The president didn't
say the use of gas would "raise the stakes." He said it's a red line.
2. You wrote that we should have intervened a year ago before the rise of
the Jihadists. But that the president was busy with other things -winding
down the war in Afghanistan, Ohio, etc. Mr. Keller, if anyone on the planet
should know how to multitask, it's the POTUS. And if he's busy, he's supposed
to delegate to a proper person for the heavy lifting. I wonder if you would
be so forgiving if a politician you disdained acted in the same way.
3. You write that we should send missiles to take out Assad's airforce.
Why? All of the reports state that the Salafists are in the vanguard and
probably a majority of the rebel fighters. If the rebels win, they will
go on a mass killing spree of Alawites, and maybe other minorities. There
is a reason that Syria's minorities have not joined the fight. They know
what awaits them if the rebels win.
So, if you're a member of a Syrian minority (30%), or a modern educated
woman, you sure don't want a rebel victory.
4. You write that the US should take the lead and we'll have allies this
time. Why take the lead? Perhaps Britain or France should. France is currently
fighting Jihadists in Mali, a former French colony. Let's remember, the
Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 gave France the mandate for Syria.
How did this happen? There are two versions of this little immorality tale,
one coming from the "left" and the other from the "right" (the scare-quotes
are there for a reason, which I’ll get to in a moment or two).
The "left" version goes something like this:
The evil capitalists, in league with their bought-and-paid for cronies
in government, destroyed and looted the economy until there was nothing
left to steal. Then, when their grasping hands had reached the very bottom
of the treasure chest, they dialed 911 and the emergency team (otherwise
known as the US Congress) came to their rescue, doling out trillions to
the looters and leaving the rest of America to pay the bill.
The "right" version goes something like the following:
Politically connected Wall Streeters, in league with their bought-and-paid-for
cronies in government, destroyed and looted the economy until there was
nothing left to steal. Then, when their grasping hands had reached the very
bottom of the treasure chest, they dialed BIG-GOV-HELP and the feds showed
up with the cash.
The first thing one notices about these two analyses, taken side by side,
is their similarity: yes, the "left" blames the free market, and the "right"
blames Big Government, but when you get past the blame game their descriptions
of what actually happened look like veritable twins. And as much as
I agree with the "right" about their proposed solution – a
radical
cut in government spending – it is the "left" that has the most accurate
analysis of who’s to blame.
It is, of course, the big banks – the recipients of bailout loot, the ones
who profited (and
continue to profit) from the economic catastrophe that has befallen us.
During the 1930s, the so-called Red Decade, no leftist agitprop was complete
without a cartoon rendering of the top-hatted capitalist with his foot planted
firmly on the throat of the proletariat (usually depicted as a muscular-but-passive
male in chains). That imagery, while crude, is largely correct – an astonishing
statement, I know, coming from an avowed
libertarian and "reactionary,"
no less. Yet my leftist pals, and others with a superficial knowledge of libertarianism,
will be even more surprised that
the founder of the modern libertarian movement, also an avowed (and proud)
"reactionary," agreed with me (or, rather,
I with him):
"Businessmen or manufacturers can either be genuine free
enterprisers or statists; they can either make their way on the free market
or seek special government favors and privileges. They choose according
to their individual preferences and values. But bankers are inherently
inclined toward statism.
"Commercial bankers, engaged as they are in unsound
fractional reserve credit, are, in the free market, always teetering on
the edge of bankruptcy. Hence they are always reaching for government aid
and bailout.
"Investment bankersdo much of their business
underwriting government bonds, in the United States and abroad. Therefore,
they have a vested interest in promoting deficits and in forcing taxpayers
to redeem government debt.Both sets of bankers, then, tend to be
tied in with government policy, and try to influence and control government
actions in domestic and foreign affairs."
That’s Murray N. Rothbard, the great libertarian theorist and economist,
in his classic monograph Wall Street, Banks,
and American Foreign Policy. If you want a lesson in the real motivations
behind our foreign policy of global intervention, starting at the very dawn
of the American empire, you have only to read this fascinating treatise. The
essence of it is this: the very rich have stayed
very rich in what would otherwise be a dynamic and ever-changing economic free-for-all
by securing government favors, enjoying state-granted monopolies, and using
the US military as their private security guards. Conservatives
who read Rothbard’s short book will never look at the Panama Canal issue in
the same light again. Lefties will come away from it marveling at how closely
the libertarian Rothbard comes to echoing the old
Marxist aphorism
that the government is the "executive committee of the capitalist class."
Rothbard’s account of the course of American foreign policy as the history
of contention between the
Morgan interests,
the Rockefellers, and the various banking "families," who dealt primarily
in buying and selling government bonds, is fascinating stuff, and it illuminates
a theme common to both left and right commentators: that the elites are manipulating
the policy levers to ensure their own economic interests unto eternity.
In normal times, political movements are centered around elaborate ideologies,
complex narratives that purport to explain what is wrong and how to fix it.
They have their heroes, and their villains, their creation myths and their dystopian
visions of a dark future in store if we don’t heed their call to revolution
(or restoration, depending on whether they’re hailing from the "left" or the
"right").
You may have noticed, however, that these are not normal times: we’re in
a crisis of epic proportions, not only an economic crisis but also a cultural
meltdown in which our
social institutions
are
collapsing, and with them longstanding social norms. In such times, ideological
categories tend to break down, and we’ve seen this especially in the foreign
policy realm, where both the "extreme" right and the "extreme" left are
calling for what the elites deride as "isolationism."
On the domestic front, too, the "right" and "left" views of what’s wrong with
the country are remarkably alike, as demonstrated above.
Conservatives and lefties may have different solutions,
but they have, I would argue, a common enemy: the banksters.
This characterization of the banking industry as the moral equivalent of
gangsters has its
proponents on both sides of the political spectrum, and today that ideological
convergence is all but complete, with only "centrists" and self-described pragmatists
dissenting. What rightists and leftists have in common, in short, is a very
powerful enemy – and that’s all a mass political movement needs to get going.
In normal times, this wouldn’t be enough: but, as I said above, these most
assuredly aren’t normal times. The crisis lends urgency to a process that has
been developing – unfolding, if you will – for quite some time, and that is
the evolution of a political movement that openly disdains the "left" and "right"
labels, and homes in on the main danger to liberty and peace on earth: the state-privileged
banking system that is now foreclosing on America.
This issue is not an abstraction: we see it being played out on the battlefield
of the debt ceiling debate. Because, after all, who will lose and who will win
if the debt ceiling isn’t raised? The losers will be the bankers who buy and
sell government bonds, i.e. those who finance the War Machine that is today
devastating much
of the world. My leftie friends might protest that these bonds also finance
Social Security payments, and I would answer that they need to grow a spine:
President Obama’s
threat that Social Security checks may not go out after the August deadline
is, like everything out that comes out of his mouth,
a lie. The government has the money to pay on those checks: this is just
his way of playing havoc with the lives of American citizens, a less violent
but nonetheless just as evil version of the havoc he plays with the lives of
Afghans,
Pakistanis, and
Libyans every day.
This isn’t about Social Security checks: it’s about an attempt to reinflate
the bubble of American empire, which
has been sagging of
late, and keep the government printing presses rolling. For the US government,
unlike a private entity, can print its way out of debt – or, these days, by
simply
adding a few zeroes to the figures on a computer screen. A central bank,
owned by "private" individuals, controls this process: it is called the Federal
Reserve. And the Fed has been the instrument of the banksters
from its very inception [.pdf],
at the turn of the 19th century – not coincidentally, roughly the time America
embarked on its course of overseas empire.
There is a price to be paid, however, for this orgy of money-printing: the
degradation, or cheapening, of the dollar. Most of us suffer on account of this
policy: the only beneficiaries are those who receive those dollars first, before
it trickles down to the rest of us. The very first to receive them are, of course,
the bankers, but there’s another class of business types who benefit, and those
are the exporters, whose products are suddenly competitive with cheaper foreign
goods. This has been a major driving force behind US foreign policy, as Rothbard
points out:
"The great turning point of American foreign policy came in the early
1890s, during the second Cleveland Administration. It was then that the
U.S. turned sharply and permanently from a foreign policy of peace and non-intervention
to an aggressive program of economic and political expansion abroad. At
the heart of the new policy were America’s leading bankers, eager to use
the country’s growing economic strength to subsidize and force-feed export
markets and investment outlets that they would finance, as well as to guarantee
Third World government bonds. The major focus of aggressive expansion in
the 1890s was Latin America, and the principal Enemy to be dislodged was
Great Britain, which had dominated foreign investments in that vast region.
"In a notable series of articles in 1894, Bankers’ Magazine
set the agenda for the remainder of the decade. Its conclusion: if ‘we could
wrest the South American markets from Germany and England and permanently
hold them, this would be indeed a conquest worth perhaps a heavy sacrifice.’
"Long-time Morgan associate Richard Olney heeded the call, as Secretary
of State from 1895 to 1897, setting the U.S. on the road to Empire. After
leaving the State Department, he publicly summarized the policy he had pursued.
The old isolationism heralded by George Washington’s Farewell Address is
over, he thundered. The time has now arrived, Olney declared, when ‘it behooves
us to accept the commanding position… among the Power of the earth.’ And,
‘the present crying need of our commercial interests,’ he added, ‘is more
markets and larger markets’ for American products, especially in Latin America.’"
The face of the Enemy has long since changed, and Britain is our partner
in a vast mercantilist enterprise, but the mechanics and motivation behind US
foreign policy remain very much the same. You’ll note that the Libyan "rebels,"
for example, set up a Central Bank
right off the bat, even before ensuring their military victory over Gadhafi
– and who do you think is going to be selling (and buying) those Libyan "government"
bonds? It sure as heck won’t be Joe Sixpack: it’s the same Wall Streeters who
issued an ultimatum to the Tea Party, via Moody’s, that they’ll either vote
to raise the debt ceiling or face the consequences.
But what are those consequences – and who will feel their impact the most?
It’s the bankers who will take the biggest hit if US bonds are downgraded:
the investment bankers, who invested in such a dodgy enterprise as the US government,
whose "full faith and credit" isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. In a free
market, these losers would pay the full price of their bad business decisions
– in our crony-capitalist system, however, they win.
They win because they have the US government behind them — and because their
strategy of degrading the dollar will reap mega-profits from American exporters,
whose overseas operations they are funding. The "China market," and the rest
of the vast undeveloped stretches of the earth that have yet to develop a taste
for iPads and Lady Gaga, all this and more will be open to them as long as the
dollar continues to fall.
That this will cripple the buying power of the average American, and raise
the specter of hyper-inflation, matters
not one whit of difference to the corporate and political elites that control
our destiny: for with the realization of their
vision
of a
World Central Bank, in which a new global currency controlled by them can
be printed to suit their needs, they will be set free from all earthly constraints,
or so they believe.
With America as the world policeman and the world banker – in alliance
with our European satellites – the Washington elite can extend their rule over
the entire earth. It’s true we won’t have much to show for it, here in America:
with the dollar destroyed, we’ll lose our economic primacy, and be subsumed
into what George Herbert Walker Bush called the "New
World Order." Burdened with defending the corporate profits of the big banks
and exporters abroad, and also with bailing them out on the home front when
their self-created bubbles burst, the American people will see a dramatic drop
in their standard of living – our sacrifice to the gods of "internationalism."
That’s what they mean when they praise the new "globalized" economy.
Yet the American people don’t want to be sacrificed, either to corporate
gods or some desiccated idol of internationalism, and they are getting increasingly
angry – and increasing savvy when it comes to identifying the source of their
troubles.
This brings us to the prospects for a left-right alliance, both short term
and in the long run. In the immediate future, the US budget crisis could be
considerably alleviated if we would simply end the wars started by George W.
Bush and
vigorously pursued by his successor. Aside from that, how many troops do
we still have in Europe – more than half a century after World War II? How many
in Korea – long after the Korean war? Getting rid of all this would no doubt
provide enough savings to ensure that those Social Security checks go out –
but that’s a bargain Obama will never make.
All those dollars, shipped overseas, enrich the
military-industrial complex and their friends, the exporters – and drain
the very life blood out of the rest of us. Opposition to this policy ought to
be the basis of a left-right alliance,
a movement to bring America home and put America first.
In the long term, there is the basis for a more comprehensive alliance: the
de-privileging of the banking sector, which cemented its rule with the establishment
of the Federal Reserve. That, however, is a topic too complex to be adequately
covered in a single column, and so I’ll just leave open the intriguing possibility.
"Left" and "right" mean nothing in the current context: the real division
is between government-privileged plutocrats and the rest of us. What you have
to ask yourself is this: which side are you on?
On occasion, truth is stranger than fiction; and in the somewhat
surreal world in which we now inhabit,
The Onion's perfect parody of where we are headed could have been lifted
from any mainstream media front-page with little questioning from the majority
of Americans. For your reading pleasure, the 62-year-old with a gun that is
the last man standing between the American people and full-scale totalitarian
government takeover.
Define irony? Here is one, or rather two, tries. Back in
the 1970s, it was none other than the US that armed the Taliban "freedom fighters"
fighting against the USSR in the Soviet-Afghanistan war, only to see these same
freedom fighters eventually and furiously turn against the same US that provided
them with arms and money, with what ended up being very catastrophic consequences,
culminating with September 11. Fast forward some 30 years and it is again the
US which, under the guise of dreams and hopes of democracy and the end of a
"dictatorial reign of terror", armed local insurgents in the Libyan war of "liberation"
to overthrow the existing regime (and in the process liberate just a bit of
Libya's oil) - the same Libya where shortly thereafter these same insurgents
rose against their former sponsor, and killed the US ambassador in what has
now become an epic foreign policy Snafu. But it doesn't end there as
according to Russia, it is the same US weapons that were provided to these Libyan
"freedom fighters" that are now being used in what is rapidly becoming a war
in Mali, involving not only assorted French regiments, but extensive
US flip flops and boots on the ground. "This will be a time bomb for decades
ahead."
Here are indications of the lingering costs of 11 years of warfare. Nearly
130,000 U.S. troops have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder,
and vastly more have experienced brain injuries. Over 1,700 have undergone life-changing
limb amputations. Over 50,000 have been wounded in action. As of Wednesday,
6,656 U.S. troops and Defense Department civilians have died.
That updated data
(.pdf) comes from a new Congressional Research Service report into military
casualty statistics that can sometimes be difficult to find — and even more
difficult for American society to fully appreciate. It almost certainly understates
the extent of the costs of war.
Start with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Counting since 2001 across
the U.S. military services, 129,731 U.S. troops have been diagnosed with the
disorder since 2001. The vast majority of those, nearly 104,000, have come from
deployed personnel.
But that’s the tip of the PTSD iceberg, since not all — and perhaps not even
most — PTSD cases are diagnosed. The former vice chief of staff of the Army,
retired Gen. Peter Chiarelli, has proposed
dropping the “D” from PTSD so as not to stigmatize those who suffer from
it — and, perhaps, encourage more veterans to seek diagnosis and treatment for
it. (Not
all veterans advocates agree with Chiarelli.)
Publisher: Basic Books; First Edition edition (1976)
Magnificent., June 3, 2007
By M. Harris (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
`On the psychology of military incompetence' is officially on the list of books
that Army personnel aren't allowed to read, but since I was given this was a
retired general, reading it seemed like the thing to do. I'm pleased I did.
To be frank, non-military personnel might not admire its sheer brilliant powers
of deductive observation. As soon as I had read it I started to panic as I saw
the caricatures played out around me. I then started to spot them in myself,
and began to panic harder. I suspect this book is designed to give oneself (if
you happen to be in the military) a bit of a fright, and to encourage introspection.
Anyway, it's a brilliant book that's simply chock-full of theories, explanations
and uncomfortable questions. I think the uncomfortable questions are the most
valuable, but you have to read for yourself to discover if you think the same.
And you should read it - it should be required reading for Officer Cadets right
up to Generals, and civilians should read it as well - after all, you're the
ones ultimately in charge of us gun-slinging types, yes?
A serious look at a deadly problem, March 19, 2007
By In the Middle of the Road (Connecticut)
For most people, including most of today's amateur theorists on the events
of the day, war is something akin to moving toy soldiers around. What they know
of military matters is all too akin to cheering for a sports team. They want
someone with a can do spirit and the willingness to charge into stiff resistance.
Take that hill no matter what the cost. Fight to the death. A lot of horse manure.
War is a deadly business and there is probably no war in which incompetence
was not afoot, whether in losing or in winning. Mix incompetence and a failure
to understand the technology of war and you have WWI. The reality is that incompetence
is as pervasive in the military as it is in the corporate world. And if we must
fight wars, we should have a reasonable expectation tht the people who direct
that effort have some idea of waht they are about. Dixon is concerned primarily
with generalship.
I first read this when it was first published in the UK at least a couple of
decades ago. It filled an important gap in the range of serious reading on both
the military and organization behavior. As another reader notes, this is just
organization behavior mil101.Most corporations are still organizing along military
lines and that cuts through titles like team leader and associate. It is hard
business to make it work right and too many times in the military, there is
a failure of competence.
The fields o fhte world are littled with the remains of those who died through
bad generals. Dixon reflects some of his own military experience in the British
Army, including WWII, before he entered the Psychology field. There is a British
emphasis, but the approach is generally and applies broadly to any military.
And the examples he cites are among those that are studied deeply for implications.
He covers the field from the intellectual capability of generals to a chapter
that for the sake of review rules must be labeled as Bull droppings.
How do we deal with incompetent leadership? That is one of the questions Dixon
addresses. It probably should be extended to political leaders given their power
over warmaking.
In our day, we are assaulted with people who accuse their opponents of micromanaging
war in Iraq. A decade or two from now, it may be somewhere else. But what we
began doing in Vietnam was executive branch micromanaging and that was greatly
expanded during the Iraq fiasco to the point that many left senior ranks. We
look closely at our generals, but can we afford
to go to war without understanding the competence gap that we might have in
political leadership..
Irreverent, superbly written, interdisciplinary, enlightenin, September
29, 1998
By A Customer
Dixon is a former artillery officer, Sandhurst graduate, and self-described
authoritarian personality, who left the Army and became a clinical psychologist.
He uses both sets of experiences to analyze why officers in armies throughout
history--mostly British, but the principles are generally applicable--have fallen
into a stereotypical pattern of incompetence specific to senior military leaders.
Much of the reason, he believes, derives from personality development, but the
book is refreshingly devoid of psychobabble and is written in an astonishingly
clear style. A real eye-opener, after which military history will not be quite
the same to the reader again.
He writes of Bush, "It isn't that he failed to consider some possible adverse
consequences of the war, but rather that he missed all of them. ... Insurgency,
civil war, Iranian strategic triumph, the breakup of Iraq, an independent Kurdistan,
military quagmire."
Peter Galbraith, the first US Ambassador to Croatia, has written a scorching
indictment of the US/British war in Iraq. He describes "an Administration
too arrogant to listen to experts, so at war with its own State Department
as to ignore its professional guidance, and ignorant or indifferent to international
law."
He writes of Bush, "It isn't that he failed to consider some possible adverse
consequences of the war, but rather that he missed all of them. ... Insurgency,
civil war, Iranian strategic triumph, the breakup of Iraq, an independent
Kurdistan, military quagmire."
The unfortunate British and American troops are not doing any good there.
The occupation is not succeeding. As Galbraith notes, "The Iraq War has
failed to serve a single major U.S. foreign policy objective. It has not
made the United States safer; it has not advanced the war on terror; it
has not made Iraq a stable state; it has not spread democracy to the Middle
East; and it has not enhanced U.S. access to oil. ... A war undertaken in
part to undermine Iran's Islamic republic has given Tehran its greatest
strategic gain in four centuries."
Galbraith concludes, "No purpose is served by a prolonged American presence
anywhere in Arab Iraq." As Dick Cheney rightly warned in 1993, "Now you
can say, well, you should have gone to Baghdad and gotten Saddam, I don't
think so. I think if we had done that we would have been bogged down there
for a very long period of time with the real possibility we might not have
succeeded." The occupation's presence is worsening the Iraqi people's suffering:
it is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
So what should we do? Galbraith suggests that Britain and the USA should
stop pretending that they can create a unified and democratic Iraq. He urges
them to withdraw their troops and hand over control of Kurdistan to the
Kurds, of the Sunni governorates to the Sunnis and of the Shia governorates
to the Shia.
July 23, 2006 A dispassionate but devastating analysis of a very passionate
issue, July 23, 2006
Topical books on controversial issues tend to inspire polemical reviews
on this site, so in the interest of transparency, I should tell you where
this reviewer comes from: I am a retired US diplomat, a lifelong Republican
(though of late a former Republican, thanks to the current Administration),
and was a strong supporter initially of the Iraq War. Now, to the book.
Peter Galbraith's core text is only 224 pages long, but it is packed with
material, eminently readable, and amounts to the most devastating critique
yet of the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq. It gains that stature
first because Galbraith is an excellent writer (not unlike his late father,
the economist John Kenneth Galbraith), and also because he has spent most
of his life in the national security arena as a long-time Senate Foreign
Relations Committee staffer, U.S. Ambassador to Croatia during the Balkan
wars, and a professor at the National War College. He brings from those
life experiences a temperament to match, so this is a clear-eyed, balanced,
tightly analytical and dispassionate account--not the kind of hysterical
screed produced by those who so detest George Bush that their temper gets
the better of their objectivity and saps their credibility. And it is just
such objectivity (coupled with Galbraith's longtime experience of the region
and acquaintance with many key players in Iraq and in the Administration)
which makes his book all the more effective as an indictment.
Galbraith
reviews the twenty-year see-saw (and often cynical) history of U.S. relations
with Saddam's regime, provides the best and most strategic critique of the
rationale (including the intelligence rationale) for the war which I have
read, and writes a detailed (and often first-hand) account of the occupation
up to the last several months which highlights the gross incompetence and
lack of advance planning which cost America whatever chance it might have
had in the immediate aftermath of victory to reshape Iraq in a manner most
congenial to us.
His basic conclusions are that Iraq was a British post-WWI Frankenstein
creation cobbled together from three antipathetic Ottoman provinces, and
that it always has been held together only by autocratic force and carried
the seeds of its own dissolution. The US invasion and US mis-management
of the occupation have now irreversibly catalyzed that process of civil
war and state disintegration into the three major ethnic/confessional groups
(Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis). Galbraith argues that we are best off accepting
that inevitability, rather than perpetuating--and participating in--a civil
war through attempts to impose a strong unitary state rather than giving
each group its own "space" as permitted under the new Iraqi constitution
which allows major regional autonomy (virtual independece) and a weak central
government.
Honest that he is, Galbraith clearly acknowledges the biggest problem such
a course and American withdrawal could entail: major ethnic cleansing and
a period of sharpened civil war and bloodshed in Baghdad and several other
areas of mixed composition if/when the various confessional groups have
to flee and regroup to seek safety in uniform religious communities. He
accepts that outcome as distasteful but implies that it is inevitable whatever
we do, so there's no point in having American troops in the middle.
He also sees as inevitable a heavily Iranian-influenced
Shiite region in Iraq, and highlights that as one of the worst failures
of strategic foresight on the part of the Bush Administration when it made
the decision to dismantle Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime.
I'm less sure of the inevitability of a broader civil war than Galbraith
--- thus less skeptical that some continued American presence could make
a positive and ameliorative difference. Also, one cannot help but suspect
that his advocacy of regional autonomy (virtual independence) for the major
contending groups in Iraq is at least partially
inspired by his 20-year association with the Kurds and his heartfelt support
for Kurdish nationalism.
Nonetheless, this book is powerfully and fairly argued and is one of
the very best accounts, and probably the best short bird's eye account,
thus far to come out of the Iraq War and occupation.
The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic
in Peril by Eugene Jarecki (New York: Free Press, 2008); 336 pages.
Many supporters of Barack Obama are disappointed that he has not reversed
the war policies of his predecessor. He did his best to continue the U.S. occupation
of Iraq. The Afghanistan war rages far beyond what was seen under George W.
Bush. Obama has also proved militaristic in operations in Libya, Yemen, and
Pakistan, and in the sanctions against Iran. The attacks on civil liberties
and human rights continue on the same path that Bush forged.
Obama gave indications early on that that would be his trajectory. He always
promised to expand the Afghanistan war. He never vowed to cut and run from Iraq
any faster than was established policy by the time Bush signed the Status of
Forces Agreement in late 2008. As a U.S. senator, he voted to legalize Bush’s
warrantless wiretapping program, foreshadowing his future sellouts as president
on the civil-liberties front.
Yet the reason for the continuity of militarism transcends anything that
can be found in Obama himself. The sad truth is that Bush’s two terms were never
quite the aberration that they were widely characterized as being. His neoconservative
advisors were particularly belligerent in some avenues of foreign-policy theory,
but they never represented a hard break from American traditions going back
several generations.
On the eve of the Iraq war, Bush partisans joyously pointed out that Bill
Clinton too had waged war, just as unilaterally, in Serbia less than four years
before. They insisted that most of Bush’s policies at home and abroad had plenty
of precedent. They were right.
Throughout American history we see many precursors for U.S. warmaking. Ever
since World War I, the United States has maintained an active role in global
affairs, at the cost of many thousands of American lives and many domestic freedoms.
Two decades earlier, the United States was internationally belligerent in the
1898 war with Spain. Long before that, American warmaking had plenty of opportunities
to show itself in the century between the Constitution’s adoption and the dawn
of the Progressive Era — an invasion of Canada, war with Mexico, and Abraham
Lincoln’s war against the South drenched the nineteenth century in statism and
blood.
Executive secrets and conspiracy in World War II
Yet much more recently than any of those antecedents to the modern war machine,
a major shift took place. And that was World War II, the “Good War,” the last
clear-cut and most widely celebrated military victory enjoyed by the United
States, the one to which liberals unfavorably compare Bush’s adventures and
conservatives invoke as precedents for their own preferred war policies. It
was in World War II that the U.S. warfare state blossomed into its modern form.
How fitting, then, that it is the event that marks the chronological beginning
of Eugene Jarecki’s narrative in his exciting and compelling book, The American
Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril. He
sets up the story appropriately:
At first glance, George W. Bush, Franklin D. Roosevelt,
and the wars each presided over might seem to have little in common. Roosevelt
is widely seen as a national hero who oversaw a military, moral, and leadership
triumph; Bush is the reverse on all counts. Yet there are parallels to how each
president guided America into conflict and transformed the country’s foreign
policy profile. Before there was “a new Pearl Harbor,” there was the original.
That is a refreshingly insightful point. And while the allied war effort
and the war on terror are seen as very different animals, especially by liberals,
Jarecki notes the important similarities. First, there is that question of Pearl
Harbor. “If Roosevelt had a Richard Perle,” the author writes, “it would have
to have been Commander Arthur McCollum.” McCollum, a top naval officer who favored
U.S. entry into World War II, formulated a memo describing eight policies the
Roosevelt administration could pursue that would encourage Japan to initiate
war. Roosevelt’s officials “understood long before Pearl Harbor … that without
such an attack, America could not be put on a war footing.” In addition to McCollum
there was War Secretary Henry Stimson, who wrote in his diary on November 25,
1941, “[The] question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing
the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.” Jarecki does
not go so far as to completely adopt the revisionist line on Roosevelt’s possible
foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack, but he draws thoughtful attention
to the major works — in particular, Robert Stinnett’s Day of Deceit
(2000).
The immediate effect of the Pearl Harbor attack was U.S. entry into World
War II, which introduced “increasing militarism into the nation’s daily life.”
That cultural shift was actively advanced by Washington, which colluded with
Hollywood and others to disseminate pro-war propaganda. The military encouraged
Frank Capra to produce his Why We Fight series of films, which “cast
America’s role in World War II in terms of the larger global conflict between
freedom and slavery, light and dark, good and evil.”
The war also transformed American government from its essentially republican
nature. While noting that Roosevelt had already expanded and abused presidential
power with such antics as his New Deal court-packing scheme, Jarecki finds even
greater aggrandizement of executive authority during the war, particularly in
Executive Order 9066, which “resulted in the internment of 120,000 people of
Japanese descent, roughly 60 percent of whom were American-born citizens.” Perhaps
even bolder was “the secrecy with which the now infamous Manhattan Project was
implemented” — “nothing on FDR’s watch was more challenging to the separation
of powers.”
Harry Truman took over America’s nuclear “arsenal of democracy” upon Roosevelt’s
death, and won the distinction as the first and so far only political leader
to launch nuclear weapons against civilians. The author cites numerous U.S.
leaders who looked upon the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as unnecessary
and immoral. He gives fair attention to various theories why Truman dropped
the bombs if they were not necessary, and without giving a definitive answer
he notes,
From a foreign policy perspective, the use of
the bombs killed two birds with one stone — ending the war with Japan while
firing the first shot in the Cold War against the Soviet Union…. [The] bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are an extreme case of the kind of self-perpetuating
militarism feared by the framers.
So Truman ended World War II and began the Cold War with an apocalyptic bang.
What’s more, he framed the beginnings of America’s conflict with the Soviet
Union in ways that changed America. The domino theory that gained ground in
his administration had lasting effects on U.S. diplomacy and anti-communist
concerns at home. It became “the foundation of his argument for a new U.S. foreign
policy” as the Truman doctrine was forged in response to the threat of communist
influence in Turkey and Greece. The new policy represented
a sea change, the most significant expansion of
American foreign policy since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. Monroe had broadened
America’s military mandate from self-defense to the defense of all free peoples
in the western hemisphere. The Truman Doctrine went further, interpreting a
threat to free people anywhere as a threat to America.
The late 1940s also featured a major rearrangement of power relations within
the U.S. defense establishment. Authority shifted from the State Department
to new authority centers in the Defense Department, the CIA, the National Security
Council, and the newly created independent Air Force. Some of the changes were
put in place by a Republican Congress determined to “reverse elements of FDR’s
executive tilt.” Yet “while the State Department was surely weakened … — perhaps
excessively — it would be hard to argue, sixty years later, that the effort
to rein in the power of the executive has succeeded.”
Another failure of the Republicans to stem the imperialist tide came in the
Eisenhower administration. While “departing from the traditional Republican
isolationism” in his 1952 campaign, Eisenhower still represented a less-activist
war policy than the two hyperinterventionist Democratic presidencies he followed.
He feared that “in a determined effort to outproduce
the Soviet Union, the United States had begun to spend a disproportionate amount
on defense in comparison with other areas of its national life.”
He was “repulsed by profligate spending on defense.” His withdrawal from
Korea and introduction of the New Look policy showed a measure of restraint.”
But it was also on Eisenhower’s watch that “the United States entered the era
of covert activity,” with coups in Guatemala and Iran and a general expansion
of CIA influence under its director, Allen Dulles.
Yet for most of the Cold War the CIA proved very limited in its supposed
main activity, gathering intelligence:
It failed to predict the Soviet detonation of
the atom bomb in 1949, the 1950 invasion of South Korea, popular uprisings in
Eastern Europe during the 1950s, the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba in
1962, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the 1979 Iranian revolution and Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan, [and] the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union.
The so-called “bomber gap” and “missile gap” and other Cold War frauds are
also discussed in The American Way of War, and there is a bit of discussion
of Vietnam and other hot conflicts, although they are not the focus. All in
all, Jarecki very nicely explores the new principal role of covert war in U.S.
policy along with the general solidification of the permanent warfare state
and military-industrial complex during the Cold War and its immediate “peacetime”
aftermath, preparing the reader for the next major era of U.S. militarism.
A war of terror at home and abroad
It will always be important to understand the specific ways the Bush administration
stretched executive power and built up the warfare state in the years following
9/11. Yet his national security policies followed the logic of previous excursions
and institutional orientations.
While the neocons were champions of the somewhat novel foreign-policy philosophy
behind Iraqi regime change, the operation represented militarily something more
in line with establishment designs. Even the military tactics of the Bush years
demonstrate both the continuity with and retreat from the past. Shock and Awe,
the opening bombing campaign in Iraq in 2003, signaled the beginning of
a fulfillment of Eisenhower’s fears of runaway
American militarism. Yet, to its planners, the opening strike seemed a natural
extension of America’s expanding foreign policy role since World War II and
of the technological advances made possible by the American way of war…. Despite
the defense secretary’s apparent collaboration … there is no evidence from Rumsfeld’s
history that he was inclined toward the kind of Pax Americana the neocons advocate.
To him, [Shock and Awe] more narrowly represented the fulfillment of a technological
military ideal, one that had emerged over the decades of his military-industrial
career.
To the extent the Iraq war has symbolized a break from previous traditions,
it has often been establishment voices condemning its betrayal of the limits
of U.S. power. “Ultimately, the Iraq War’s descent from a technocrat’s fantasy
of transformational war into a quagmire … has vindicated those who opposed Rumsfeld’s
approach in the first place: General Shineki, General Schwarzkopf … General
Franks.” The Iraq War’s hubristic goals coupled with poor planning and execution
“undermined the very strategic precepts [the war] was meant to demonstrate.”
Other elements of Bush’s war on terror are defined by their building on older
U.S. practices while deviating in important ways from past experience. The very
doctrine of preemptive war was not completely new, except in the overtness of
it all, which “departed from [American] traditions so brazenly [and] makes yesterday’s
aberration today’s standard operating procedure.” This tendency was further
seen in the administration’s flouting of “vital checks on its conduct of office”
in handling intelligence running up to the Iraq war, and in its gross attacks
on the separation of powers and civil liberties, in each case building on past
precedents to break new ground in presidential prerogative.
Bush’s NSA wiretapping program was “a far-reaching attack” on both congressional
and judicial authority with only a few parallels in the past, and although “past
administrations have asserted [executive privilege] from time to time, the Bush
administration has done so with unprecedented vigor.” Bush’s “firing of eight
U.S. attorneys” in 2006 “represented both a politically motivated purge [and]
a preemptive attack on the judicial system” — and although the administration’s
“scorn for certain judges is not an altogether new phenomenon,” wrote former
Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’ Connor, “the breadth and intensity of rage
currently being leveled at the judiciary may be unmatched in American history.”
On detention policy, although Bush is “not the first American president to
[use an enemy-combatant doctrine], and although he was empowered by the precedents
of Lincoln and Roosevelt, no administration has ever asserted more unilateral
discretion over and to what extent the country will abide by the constitutional
requirement to uphold the writ of habeas corpus.” In the whole discussion of
a “balance” between liberty and executive-pursued security, the Bush administration
leaned toward the latter, as is discussed in Jarecki’s fine treatment of the
legal philosophy put forth by high Justice Department official John Yoo.
The Bush stance on national security — largely adopted by the Obama administration
— raises two points that do not contradict one another but require nuance and
balance to be understood in concert. First are the many ways the Bush years
were not a retreat from past U.S. experience, the many ways that expansions
of presidential power, deception, imperial muscle flexing, and a permanently
influential defense establishment were entrenched American traditions for three
generations before the planes hit the World Trade Center.
The second point is the key ways in which the Bush years built and expanded
on past precedents and broke new ground. Although Bush was not the first imperial
president, he was an important one in the history of the U.S. warfare state’s
development. Jarecki tells this story very well, in exciting prose and with
something of a fair mind given to both revisionist and official versions of
U.S. diplomatic history. The American Way of War is a solid addition
to the critical literature about U.S. wars and foreign policy since the 1940s.
Barney Frank argues that, when it comes to defense spending, we should "spend
less, and liberals should not flinch from that position." The essential
point, I think, is that "the major trade-off in putting together a total deficit
reduction package is between the military and health care," and, though he does
note this in a couple of places, I wish that point had been stressed more in
the article (the essay is much, much longer):
The New Mandate on Defense, by Barney Frank, Democracy: There were so
many encouraging signs for liberals in the election results this year that
one of the most significant has been overlooked. For the first time in my
memory, a Democratic candidate for President argued for less military spending
against a Republican candidate who called for great increases—and the Democrat
won. ...
Because so much of that spending stems from overreach advocated
by those who believe that America should be the enforcer of order everywhere
in the world—and because we subsidize our wealthy European and Asian allies
by providing a defense for them...—there has been increasing conservative
support for reining in the military budget. Ron Paul, who goes far beyond
most liberals in his eagerness to impose severe military cuts, was a popular
figure with a significant base of GOP support not despite taking this position
but in part because of it.
Earlier this year, for the first time that I can recall, a majority of
the House of Representatives voted to reduce the military appropriation
recommended by the House Appropriations Committee. The cut was only $1.1
billion—less than it should have been—but it ... passed... with the support
of ... a significant minority of Republicans...
A realistic reassessment of our true national security needs would mean
a military budget significantly lower... That is, by next year, we no longer
should be forced to spend additional funds—close to $200 billion a year
at their peak—in Afghanistan and Iraq. Additionally, we can reduce the base
budget by approximately $1 trillion over a ten-year period ... while maintaining
more than enough military strength...
Even with the revenue increase we can achieve by raising taxes on the
wealthy, serious deficit reduction must come in part from reducing military
spending beyond what the President proposes, unless we make very deep cuts
in the nonmilitary parts of the budget. ... Given the numbers involved,
the major trade-off in putting together a total deficit reduction package
is between the military and health care...
To be clear, this is not an argument against America continuing to be
the strongest nation in the world. ... That said, being the strongest nation
in the world can be achieved much less expensively than at current levels.
Obama ... underestimates the extent to which the public is willing to support
even further reductions, and I believe that he may appear to be overly influenced
by being told that as President, he has the duty to continue to lead the
indispensable nation.
The United States was indispensable in 1945 and for many years thereafter...
But things have changed. We can no longer afford ... extending a military
umbrella over many allies on whom it is not raining—and who can well afford
their own protective gear if it does. ...
This all means that a major political task going forward for liberals
is pushing for further reductions in military spending, an objective that
we now know is not only socially and economically necessary but also politically
achievable.
Important social services versus tax cuts for the rich and military spending.
Those with unmet needs and little social/economic power versus the wealthy and
the military. I suppose in some sense, given who's in this battle, it's remarkable
there's been any headway at all. But there needs to be more progress on protecting
the vulnerable.
Does this include items not in defense budget per se, including the dark"
budget of clandestine activities, actual war spending, state department,
defense programs in the DOE, military aid, building and site construction,
maintenance and security, foreign rents?
I think I've heard you get about $1T total defense-related if you look
beyond the official defense dept authorization, which like all such, is
written to meet political needs.
And then there are VA, retirement, etc., but I'd class those as human
service or (i hate this word) entitlement since not related to current activity,
though some analysts do include them in defense-rellated because in obvious
way they are.
Spending for the Central Intelligence Agency is released only every 10
years, so we have no real sense of what such spending amounts to after 2007
when it was evidently $47.5 billion. * The CIA budget was 26.7 billion in
1997.
Also, spending for maintaining the nuclear arsenal is separated from
basic military spending and comes from the budget of the Energy Department.
The budget for maintaining the nuclear arsenal for the coming year is about
$17 billion. *
"I've heard you get about $1T total defense-related if you look beyond
the official defense dept authorization, which like all such, is written
to meet political needs...."
What is necessary is that we try to be exact and authoritative, since
the exact figures should be revealing enough. Figures on military spending
are repeatedly understated by reporters, since military spending is set
by Congress in a number of proposals. Also, as with spending for the CIA,
part of the total cannot be precisely known.
So we can and should rely on the Bureau of Economic Analysis data on
basic military spending above all.
Except for the Saudi oil bought and the foriegn contractors, all the
war department spending is the biggest jobs program we have that has decent
pay.
The other jobs program, the Medicare and Medicaid does pay doctors high
wages, but the rest of the jobs are pretty crappy jobs, either low wages
or crappy benefits or both. But they are jobs.
Both sectors are really bloated and are mostly the stereotypical "government
jobs" jobs but in the private sector with the bloat expanding the profits
which are a fixed percentage of all the billing to the government, so the
higher the billing, the higher the profits, thus no incentive to be efficient.
Defense spending was 67.2% of federal government consumption and investment
in 2011.
$820.8 billion / $1222.1 billion = 67.2%
Defense spending was 26.8% of all government consumption and investment
in 2011.
$820.8 billion / $3059.8 billion = 26.8%
Basic military spending in 2011 was $820.8 billion while basic military
spending from July through September 2012 was running at a yearly level
of $834.5 billion.
tom
You could cut defense by $2 trillion over 10 years while maintaining
more than enough military.
ilsm
to tom...
$2T would be from $7.8T and 4 times what the sequestration would cut.
However, that would keep the US spending 4% of GDP down from 5% plus.
4% of GDP is more than twice the share of GDP any other "first world
country" devotes to searching for solutions to insecurity with more violence.
A $5T cut over the next 10 years would be proper.
It could be done by killing the weapons which fail their tests, and the
older stuff that never did work, that would get rid of the inepts who are
bascially corporate welfare queens.
Mark A. Sadowski
to ilsm...
According to the CBO nominal GDP will be just over $200 trillion from
FY2013-2022.
Reducing defense spending to 2.0% of GDP in accordance with NATO target
will save $2.7 trillion off of the $6.7 trillion in estimated defense spending
over 2013-2022 under the Baseline Scenario (Table 1-3).
You could cut defense spending by 2/3 and still outspend anyone else
by a factor of three. we should also cut DHS spending, most of which is
wasted on useless security theater tactics and stings targeting aspirational
deadenders who could not tie their own shoes without the FBI.
Mark A. Sadowski
to DrDick...
The US spends a lot, but not that much. According to SIPRI, US defense
spending totalled $711 billion in 2011, compared to $143 billion for China
in exchange rate terms, or $228 billion in purchasing power parity (PPP)
terms:
So, given these numbers, it would be correct to say that the US defense
budget could be cut by 2/3 and and still outspend any other country.
anne
to Mark A. Sadowski...
The US spends a lot, but not that much. According to SIPRI, US defense
spending totalled $711 billion in 2011, compared to $143 billion for China
in exchange rate terms....
[ Rubbish, simply rubbish. I am offended by reporters who cannot be bothered
to or who are wildly militarist and will not properly report basic American
military spending:
According to SIPRI, US defense spending totalled $711 billion in 2011....
[ Basic military spending in 2011 was $820.8 billion, and basic military
spending does not include spending on the nuclear arsenal or spending on
the Central Intelligence Agency which come to tens of billions of dollar
more.
To report that military spending in 2011 was $711 billion when the amount
was $820.8 billion for basic military spending is intolerable. ]
Mark A. Sadowski
to anne...
The BEA figure for federal Defense Gross Investment and Consumption is
not comparable with the federal defense budget figure and hence is probably
not comparable to the international figures that SIPRI estimates.
I suspect the major reason for the difference between the BEA figure
and the defense budget is line 8, or consumption of general government fixed
capital. This item totaled $95.8 billion in 2011.
A detailed description of the government transactions section of the
NIPA accounts is here:
Section II page 33 is where it discusses federal defense spending.
anne
to Mark A. Sadowski...
The BEA figure for federal Defense Gross Investment and Consumption is
not comparable with the federal defense budget figure and hence is probably
not comparable to the international figures that SIPRI estimates....
[ This is all evidently designed to obscure what basic military spending
comes to:
Basic military spending in 2011 was $820.8 billion, * and basic military
spending does not include spending on the nuclear arsenal or spending on
the Central Intelligence Agency which come to tens of billions of dollar
more.
The BEA figure is a NIPA measure of defense gross investment and consumption
and is in no way comparable to the available international measures of defense
spending.
anne
to Mark A. Sadowski...
What nonsense, but do keep on obscuring what military spending actually
comes to in America for whatever reason. As for international this and international
that, the heck with that. I am setting down American military spending and
the heck with the NIPA TIPPA SIPPA Flippa (no offense to dolphins) nonsense
meant to obscure what American military spending is.
Mark A. Sadowski
to anne...
"As for international this and international that, the heck with that."
But the comment that started this particular subthread (Dr Dick's on
Saturday, December 22, 2012 at 12:56 PM) refers specifically to making international
comparisons. The BEA's National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA)
are not appropriate since equivalent measures are not available for all
of the largest spenders on national defense.
On the other hand SIPRI takes great care to make sure their numbers are
comparable. As they note:
"There is no generally agreed definition of military expenditure
worldwide. SIPRI seeks to include in its definition of military expenditure
all costs incurred as a result of current military activities. The guideline
definition used by SIPRI includes expenditure on the following actors
and activities: (a) the armed forces, including peacekeeping forces;
(b) defence ministries and other government agencies engaged in defence
projects; (c) paramilitary forces, when judged to be trained and equipped
for military operations; and (d) military space activities. It includes
all current and capital expenditure on: (a) military and civil personnel,
including retirement pensions of military personnel and social services
for personnel; (b) operations and maintenance; (c) procurement; (d)
military research and development; and (e) military aid (in the military
expenditure of the donor country). It does not include civil defence
and current expenditure for past military activities, such as for veterans'
benefits, demobilization, conversion and weapon destruction."
I see what I did there. It was a math error in the division.
Mark A. Sadowski
to DrDick...
Those numbers come from the same exact source that I cited above (SIPRI).
How do you get:
"You could cut defense spending by 2/3 and still outspend anyone else
by a factor of three."
from those numbers?
DrDick
to Mark A. Sadowski...
Wrong divisor.
Mark A. Sadowski
to DrDick...
"...we should also cut DHS spending,..."
Civilian employment in the federal government averaged 2.759 million
in FY2001. By FY2004 it had fallen to 2.729 million. In FY2011 it averaged
2.864 million. So from FY2001 to FY2011 a total of 105,000 jobs federal
civilian government jobs were added.
(Incidentally civilian employment in the federal government peaked in
FY1990 at 3.197 million.)
Employment figures for agencies other than the Coast Guard are hard to
come by for the individual components of the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) from before FY2004. Coast Guard employment was about 36,100 in FY2001
(Table 496):
So between FY2004 and FY2011 alone, employment at DHS increased by 44,600
or 25.3%. For comparison overall federal civilian employment increased by
135,000 or 4.9%. Thus, although DHS accounted for only 6.4% of federal civilian
employment in FY2004 it accounted for 33.0% of the increase in federal civilian
employment from FY2004 through FY2011.
The Transportation Security Agency (TSA) was the second largest employer
after Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) in DHS in FY2011, accounting for about
25% of all DHS employees. In FY2004, at 51,350 employees, it was the largest
employer in the DHS. Prior to FY2002 it did not exist.
Excluding the TSA, total employment in the DHS was 124,500 in FY2004.
Thus subtracting the increase in Coast Guard employment beween FY2001 and
FY2004 (9400), I think it's reasonable to claim that total employment by
the agencies that compose the DHS was probably less than 115,100 in FY2001.
This means that at least 105,400 of the 105,000 in increased federal
civilian employment between FY2001 and FY2011 can be accounted for by the
DHS, or essentially all of it.
ilsm
to Mark A. Sadowski...
DoD budget increased nearly 75% from 2001
to 2008.
Federal employment is a poor metric. Too much 'employment' growth has
been replaced by contracted services, more profit (from buying services
for profit) to buy "unwarranted influence".
The mess stewards in Afghanistan are all locals, or third country nationals.
Civilian employment in the US government is half for DoD.
The rise in DoD civilian employment was surpressed by contracting out.
In 2009 when Ashton Carter (USD AT&L) began thinking about controlling
rising costs, he observed that DoD spent about $400B a year on contracts,
by 2009 too much of it was for "services" (and not things) which used to
be done by US civilians and soldiers.
DrDick
to Mark A. Sadowski...
The point is not to eliminate the funding, but to divert it to more productive
uses.
Exactly. If we want to spend money - and I think we do! - we should shift
two thirds to spending on environmental defense - trillions for greening
American homes, offices, factories, etc. It would be as wasteful as the
space program, but it would work, I am sure.
However, it isn't going to happen under the current political and plutocratic
order. So shelve it for the firty year retrospective: how the U.S. failed,
and brought disaster on the world in the process. Should be a major tv show,
I figure, in 2060.
I think a large amount of that should also go to beefing up the social
safety net programs. Things like lowering the eligibility age for SS and
Medicare to 60, introducing a robust public healthcare option, increasing
welfare payments and expanding eligibility to cover low income workers,
and high quality public daycare for children would do a lot to spur the
economy, as well as relieving a lot of unnecessary misery.
dandelion
What the people want doesn't matter.
Lafayette
to dandelion...
How do we know "what the people want" when fully half the population
stays away from the plling booths?
First, they must learn how to form an opinion, then they how to excercise
that opinion in a political manner.
And we, as a nation, are very far from both of those requisites.
Democracy - use it or lose it...
dandelion
to Lafayette...
People emailed and phoned congress to protest the bank bailouts by a
margin of 700 to 1. That didn't matter.
People are overwhelmingly against cuts to Sicial Security and Medicare.
I promise you that won't matter either. Just as they overwhelmingly support
cuts to the defense budget and that won't matter either.
It's not that people don't form opinions or don't vote. It's that their
opinions and votes aren't what instruct the legislators or the president.
Witness Obama first proposing to raise the eligibility age for Medicare
and now proposing to cut Social Security despite the fact that only weeks
ago he campaigned as the champion of the working poor and the middle class
and as wearing the mantle of the new deal democratic legacy
Seth
to dandelion...
What the people want doesn't matter [to those presently in power].
DrDick
to Seth...
That has generally been true in US history.
jonathan
Cool. More money to post armed security guards at all our schools, churches,
movie theaters and play spaces.
ilsm
to jonathan...
Let the NRA pay for the armed police in the schools, then they won't
need the lobbyists.
Oops, they can get it a lot cheaper using lobbyists and pillaging the
tax payer.
Guards against gun nuts the US don't need health care and social security.
Only security US gets is from guns and nukes!
Seth
to jonathan...
"... to post armed security guards ..."
The better to control us.
We are far down the rabbit-hole. The well-regulated militia clause will
be used to create a well-regulating [ruling] militia.
Number of the Week: Without Unemployment Extension, Millions to Lose
Benefits
By Ben Casselman
"2.1 million: The number of Americans who will lose their jobless benefits
on January 1 if Congress doesn’t extend emergency unemployment programs.
Most of the focus during the drawn-out (and apparently now stalled) negotiations
over the “fiscal cliff” has been on taxes — who should pay more, who should
be spared and how much additional revenue the government should raise. Less
discussed has been the imminent expiration of nearly all federal emergency
unemployment programs, which now provide benefits to 2.1 million job seekers.
Congress created the programs starting in 2008 as a temporary supplement
to regular state-administered unemployment insurance, which in most states
provides 26 weeks of payments. At their peak, federal programs provided
up to 99 weeks of benefits to 6 million unemployed workers.
Congress has repeatedly extended the emergency benefits amid continued
high unemployment, and the White House is pushing to do so again. But even
before the cliff negotiations bogged down, the prospects of another extension
was uncertain. The recent drop in the unemployment rate to 7.7% may have
made the issue appear less pressing — although the jobless rate remains
well above where it was when Congress first enacted the programs in 2008.
Indeed, even before the year-and deadline, the federal programs have
been shrinking. The Extended Benefits program, the final step in the multi-tiered
structure, once provided benefits to more than a million job seekers; after
a major cut back earlier this year, it now serves fewer than 45,000. The
more widely available Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, known
as EUC, has seen its rolls fall to about 2 million from nearly 6 million
at its peak. Part of the drop is due to the improving labor market, but
the programs have also become less generous: No state now offers more than
73 weeks of benefits, and in some states the clock runs out after less than
a year.
Still, that doesn’t mean the programs’ disappearance would be insignificant.
Unlike past deadlines, this one is a hard stop — benefits won’t roll off
gradually but rather will expire all at once overnight. That has economic
implications that go beyond the impact on the recipients themselves. The
average EUC beneficiary receives about $284 a week, making the program the
equivalent of a $2.4 billion monthly stimulus. Credit Suisse estimates that
allowing the program to expire would be enough to shave two tenths of a
percentage point off GDP growth next year.
Economic research has shown that unemployment benefits can lead to higher
joblessness by discouraging beneficiaries from accepting jobs they might
otherwise have taken. Various economists have attempted to quantify the
impact of the federal emergency programs on the unemployment rate during
the recent recession; their conclusions vary, but in general, most of found
the programs boosted the unemployment rate by somewhere between 0.5 and
one percentage point at the peak of the crisis. The effect is almost certainly
smaller now the benefits [have] become less generous.
Long-term unemployment, meanwhile, remains high. Some 4.8 million Americans
had been out of work for more than six months in November, more than two
fifths of all job seekers, and the average unemployed worker has been out
of work for over nine months."
Lafayette
DEJA VU
We've been here (in this context) before many a time. After WW1, then
after WW2, then after Vietnam, etc., etc.
And we elect some dunderhead of a PotUS from the Right who thinks we
must become "kick ass" in order to defend our vested interests ... and off
we go again. Inevitably lamenting our dead who come home to us in body-bags.
Until the people show clearly that they are against all military intervention
of any kind and insist that the UN assumes its rightful role to intervene
in conflicts, then the past will repeat itself far into the future.
And we shall never tame our budget, thus burdening future generations
with the pain of supporting financially our past mistakes.
ilsm
to Lafayette...
The US military exists to protect the 1%'s property (empire) around the
world, while plundering the butter of the 99%.
Like the Queen Empress' Tommies in Inja and Africa whom Kipling sung
whiling away his time.
I went into a public-’ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ’e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play.
I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but ’adn’t none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-’alls,
But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.
Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ’ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ’eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of ’eroes” when the drums begin to roll.
We aren’t no thin red ’eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind.
You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ’is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!
-- Rudyard Kpling
Darryl FKA Ron
to anne...
Some things don't change. When I returned from Viet Nam then I was shown
disrespect and then treated down right dirty. I don't see that things have
really changed much at all for our veterans today. They are now shown symbolic
respect, just lip service, that Viet Nam veterans did not get. THen they
are still treated down right dirty. Well, I really never cared much about
the symbolic disrespect that I recieved since it dissipated as quickly as
my hair grew back out. The change in this symbolic attitude is mostly for
the benefit of the civilians as it lessens their guilt and self-loathing
for the paultry care given for PTSD and other veterans health and economic
adjustment benefits.
THANKS!
ilsm
to anne...
Tommy was written in part to show the plight of retired British soldiers
and their heirs/assigns.
Particular issues were seen in Crimean war veterans.
Kipling is a favorite of mine, especially Gunga Din.
You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental *bhisti*, Gunga Din. [water carrier]
Darryl FKA Ron
to anne...
I would think that Gunga Din and Mowgli (Jungle Book) and even The Man
That Would Be King clearly provide a nuance to Kipling about courage, honor,
and character among native people and the arrogance of Englishmen ("King"
Danny my boy Dravot) well beyond the imperialist bigot that he is often
considered to be by modern liberals. THen there those damned awful slave
owners, Washington and Jefferson.
ilsm
to Darryl FKA Ron...
Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Tho' I've belted you an' flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
Justin Cidertrades
to ilsm...
"
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
"
You're a better shadow of your former self than I am, Gunga Din!
Defense is a chain of unbroken links. When one of such links breaks we
all suddenly become the slaves of our enemy. Each month in our short life
is one of the links. Do you see what is happening?
Each month Department of Defense needs to spend certain amount on the
current link but hold the residual funds in reserve. The reserve regiment
is our largest unit by necessity. Fishing within the economic sea for funding
to fatten our reserve unit and current link is like overfishing in the sea.
When you deplete the spawning stock then you need to wait for literally
years for fish to reappear. Tell me something!
Has DOD been overfishing for economic fish? Is DOD treading thin ice?
Our economy needs lot more spawning for more critical future links when
our military advantage is more tenuous. Should DOD gals/guys go to bat for
economists who are now protesting against the banksters, lobbyists, and
rogue politicians who are trashing our economy for fun and personal profit?
Should our Admirals and General Officers put more pressure on the malefactors
who have looted our corporations and government agencies at the risk of
downgrading present and future operational efficiency of those units. Should
the sleeping giant awaken?
Wake up, Great
Giant
!
anne
to Darryl FKA Ron...
I noticed in the last week that Kipling "dedicated" "White Man's Burden"
to the war in the Philippines that was going on in 1899 and that has suggested
a whole new reading of the poem to me and perhaps a different understanding
of Kipling than I have taken from secondary sources:
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
...
Darryl FKA Ron
to ilsm...
"Kipling is a favorite of mine, especially Gunga Din."
Mine too as a story teller, which is what he did even if was written
in verse.
The WaPost article in particular shows the impending cuts leave the pentagon
with 25% more than the troughs after Vietnam and Cold War reductions.
ziggy
If we restricted ourselves to a coast guard and a national guard -- in
keeping with the traditions of most of our history -- then maybe, just maybe,
the strategic geniuses who infest the Beltway might have to develop some
imagination. Maybe they'd have to learn that sending out the aircraft carriers
isn't the only way to react to events on the other side of the world. Maybe
they'd even begin to suspect that most events happening on the other side
of the world don't require any reaction from us at all.
P. Lee
"Go ahead and cut defense spending," speaks the oil/commodities trader,
"I will make profit one way or another."
I think the Draft should be reinstated. There should be required service
for EVERYONE (no discrimination against women); military or civilian service!
The elimination of the draft has created a separate and self sustaining
Military Class. Dot the one-percenters volunteer? The "Citizen Soldiers"
that returned from WWII, Korea and Viet Nam saw war first hand, up close
and personal and didn't like it. We need this kind of Citizen Soldiers in
the general population.
If we have to use Military Force in the future all the should sacrifice;
not just our 'voluteer' force. War is much more serious than just a line
in the national budget.
BTW: I know my grandfather, a retired Coast Guard officer, has been rolling-over
in his grave since it became a part of Homeland Stupidity.
PJR
Let it be stipulated that we spend too much on defense and, as a country,
too much for the health care that we receive. That said, Frank falls into
the trap of saying "we can't afford it." BS. The only thing we can't afford
is allowing our economy to perform far below capacity, with millions of
unemployed people watching our infrastructure crumble. In other words, we
cannot afford to continue the policies that we've pursued for the past three-plus
decades and at the same time waste vast amounts of our resources.
Yeah, distrust that "we". Who, after all, is it?Is it the "we" who profits
from extending Pharma IP? The "we" whose income has stagnated since the
late nineties, or the "we" whose income soared? The 'we' who owes as much
as it has in assets, or the "we" who is a net creditor?
That hegemonic we. It does amazing tricks. It divides itself into two persons
and both debate to be elected president. It divides itself into Wall Street
and Congress and in general is as happy with its situation as pigs in a
wallow. But that we doesn't go beyond the gated community, for that is the
strange America, which baffled the respectable by voting for the wrong we
this time - Obama - in the feeble hope that he wouldn't piss on them from
-- wheeee! -- on high. Well, of course, he must - that is what the "we"
does.
I don't share a we with the politicians.
run75441
pjr;
Kind of close to my thinking.
"we cannot afford to continue the policies that we've pursued for the
past three-plus decades and at the same time waste vast amounts of our resources."
Has anyone looked at defense spending as a percentage of GDP? If we are
outstripping GDP growth; then we are sacrificing domestic productivity.
No country has remained a Tier 1 country by doing so for a long period of
time since the QIN Dynasty. Each has found itself surpassed and relegated
to much lower tiers.
kievite
to run75441...
There is another side effect (aka externality) of huge defense spending
-- growth of external debt. Total government debt is more then 16 trillions
which means that interest (at 2%) is 320 billions a year or so. Or around
a billion a day.
I wonder how much of then it external debt. Contrary to Krugman-style
thinking deficits are dangerous because of debt snowballing, and at some
level of debt (let's say over 30% of GDP), the quantity turns into quality.
And further depresses domestic productivity.
So far printing of money was the solution, but this is a Japan-style
solution. Like in saying "If something can't go forever, it will eventually
stop." Then what ?
The biggest danger is that if the current level of energy prices are
at the foundation of all troubles, then the return to steady above 3% growth
on which people like Krugman count as the solution, will always be short-lived,
even if it can be temporary achieved.
kievite
to kievite...
In a way we can even count defense spendings as additional energy costs.
...Although the OCS must report the costs of all military operations abroad,
the Pentagon omits $550 million for counter-narcotics operations and $108 million
for humanitarian and civic aid. Both have, as a budget document explains about
humanitarian aid, helped "maintain a robust overseas presence", while the military
"obtains access to regions important to US interests". The Pentagon also spent
$24 million on environmental projects abroad to monitor and reduce on-base pollution,
dispose of hazardous and other waste, and for "initiatives... in support of
global basing/operations." So the bill now grows by $682 million for counternarcotics,
humanitarian, and environmental programs.
The Pentagon tally of the price of occupying the planet also ignores the
costs of secret bases and classified programs overseas. Out of a total Pentagon
classified budget of $51 billion for 2012, I conservatively use only the estimated
overseas portion of operations and maintenance spending, which adds $2.4 billion.
Then there's the $15.7 billion Military Intelligence Program. Given that US
law generally bars the military from engaging in domestic spying, I estimate
that half this spending, $7.9 billion, took place overseas.
Next, we have to add in the CIA's paramilitary budget, funding activities
including secret bases in places like Somalia, Libya, and elsewhere in the Middle
East, and its drone assassination program, which has grown precipitously since
the onset of the war on terror. With thousands dead (including hundreds of civilians),
how can we not consider these military costs? In an e-mail, John Pike, director
of GlobalSecurity.org, told me that "possibly a third" of the CIA's estimated
budget of $10 billion may now go to paramilitary costs, yielding $13.6
billion for classified programs, military intelligence, and CIA paramilitary
activities.
Last but certainly not least comes the real biggie: the costs of the 550
bases the US built in Afghanistan, as well as the last three months of life
for our bases in Iraq, which once numbered 505 before the US pullout from that
country (that is, the first three months of fiscal year 2012). While the Pentagon
and congress exclude these costs, that's like calculating the New York Yankees'
payroll while excluding salaries for each year's huge free-agent signings.
Conservatively following the OCS methodology used for other countries, but
including costs for healthcare, military pay in the base budget, rent, and "other
programs," we add an estimated: $104.9 billion for bases and military
presence in Afghanistan and other war zones.
Having started with the OCS figure of $22.1 billion,
the grand total now has reached: $168 billion ($169,963,153,283 to be exact).
That's nearly an extra $150 billion. Even if you exclude war costs - and
I think the Yankees show why that's a bad idea - the total still reaches $65.1
billion, or nearly three times the Pentagon's calculation.
But don't for a second think that that's the end of our garrisoning costs.
In addition to spending likely hidden in the nooks and crannies of its budget,
there are other irregularities in the Pentagon's accounting. Costs for 16 countries
hosting US bases but left out of the OCS entirely, including Colombia, El Salvador,
and Norway, may total more than $350 million.
The costs of the military presence in Colombia alone could reach into the
tens of millions in the context of more than $8.5 billion in Plan Colombia funding
since 2000. The Pentagon also reports costs of less than $5 million each for
Yemen, Israel, Uganda, and the Seychelles Islands, which seems unlikely and
could add millions more.
When it comes to the general US presence abroad, other costs are too difficult
to estimate reliably, including the price of Pentagon offices in the United
States, embassies, and other government agencies that support bases and troops
overseas. So, too, US training facilities, depots, hospitals, and even cemeteries
allow overseas bases to function.
Other spending includes currency-exchange costs, attorneys' fees and damages
won in lawsuits against military personnel abroad, short-term "temporary duty
assignments", US-based troops participating in exercises overseas, and perhaps
even some of NASA's military functions, space-based weapons, a percentage of
recruiting costs required to staff bases abroad, interest paid on the debt attributable
to the past costs of overseas bases, and Veterans Administration costs and other
retirement spending for military personnel who served abroad.
Beyond my conservative estimate, the true bill
for garrisoning the planet might be closer to $200 billion a year.
'Spillover costs'
Those, by the way, are just the costs in the US government's budget. The total
economic costs to the US economy are higher still. Consider where the taxpayer-funded
salaries of the troops at those bases go when they eat or drink at a local restaurant
or bar, shop for clothing, rent a local home, or pay local sales taxes in Germany,
Italy, or Japan. These are what economists call "spillover" or "multiplier effects".
When I visited Okinawa in 2010, for example, Marine Corps representatives bragged
about how their presence contributes $1.9 billion annually to the local economy
through base contracts, jobs, local purchases, and other spending. Although
the figures may be overstated, it's no wonder members of congress like Senator
Kay Bailey Hutchison have called for a new "Build in America" policy to protect
"the fiscal health of our nation".
And the costs are still broader when one considers the trade-offs, or opportunity
costs, involved. Military spending creates fewer jobs per million dollars expended
than the same million invested in education, healthcare, or energy efficiency
- barely half as many as investing in schools.
Even worse, while military spending clearly provides direct benefits to the
Lockheed Martins and KBRs of the military-industrial complex, these investments
don't, as economist James Heintz says, boost the "long-run productivity of the
rest of the private sector" the way infrastructure investments do.
To adapt a famous line from president Dwight Eisenhower: every base that
is built signifies in the final sense a theft. Indeed, think about what Dal
Molin's half a billion dollars in infrastructure could have done if put to civilian
uses. Again echoing Ike, the cost of one modern base is this: 260,000 low-income
children getting healthcare for one year or 65,000 going to a year of Head Start
or 65,000 veterans receiving VA care for a year.
A different kind of 'spillover'
Bases also create a different "spillover" in the financial and non-financial
costs host countries bear. In 2004, for example, on top of direct "burden sharing"
payments, host countries made in-kind contributions of $4.3 billion to support
US bases. In addition to agreeing to spend billions of dollars to move thousands
of US Marines and their families from Okinawa to Guam, the Japanese government
has paid nearly $1 billion to soundproof civilian homes near US air bases on
Okinawa and millions in damages for successful noise pollution lawsuits.
Similarly, as base expert Mark Gillem reports, between 1992 and 2003, the
Korean and US governments paid $27.3 million in damages because of crimes committed
by US troops stationed in Korea. In a single three-year period, US personnel
"committed 1,246 criminal acts, from misdemeanors to felonies".
As these crimes indicate, costs for local communities extend far beyond the
economic. Okinawans have recently been outraged by what appears to be another
in a long series of rapes committed by US troops. Which is just one example
of how, from Japan to Italy, there are what Anita Dancs calls the "costs of
rising hostility" over bases. Environmental damage pushes the financial and
non-financial toll even higher. The creation of a base on Diego Garcia in the
Indian Ocean sent all of the local Chagossian people into exile.
So, too, US troops and their families bear some of those non-financial costs
due to frequent moves and separation during unaccompanied tours abroad, along
with attendant high rates of divorce, domestic violence, substance abuse, sexual
assault, and suicide.
"No one, no one likes it," a stubbly-faced old man told me as I was leaving
the construction site. He remembered the Americans arriving in 1955 and now
lives within sight of the Dal Molin base. "If it were for the good of the people,
okay, but it's not for the good of the people."
"Who pays? Who pays?" he asked. "Noi," he said. We do.
Indeed, from that $170 billion to the costs we can't quantify, we all do.
David Vine, a Tom Dispatch regular, is assistant professor of anthropology
at American University, in Washington, DC. He is the author of Island of
Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton
University Press, 2009). He has written for the New York Times, the Washington
Post, the Guardian, and Mother Jones, among other places. He is currently completing
a book about the more than 1,000 US military bases located outside the United
States. To read a detailed description of the calculations described in this
article and view a chart of the costs of the US military presence abroad, visitwww.davidvine.net.
If we study Hitlers propaganda and compare it to NATO propaganda now. We
see NATO is using the same tactics with even less opposition. Now the most
sensible opposition is just deemed silly. It worked in Yugoslavia in the
90s even better than in Chechoslavoka. The Hague courts lies have not even
been discovered yet to be a totally false court. the fast majority of the
world people believe this is a legitimate justice institution.
Quote: Originally Posted by Dies Irae Hahahahahah...cough cough....HAHAHAHAHAH
Hilariously hackneyed equivocation.
I'm glad that my post amused you to such degree. Sadly I don't think
the victims of the attack on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory or the
countless victims in Afghanistan would laugh as much as you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Possum Jenkins And Bush I, Reagan (holy
shit), Carter, Ford, Nixon, Kennedy... every American president
since Truman, really.
Since WWII, becoming a war criminal is an almost unavoidable part
of being the president of the US. That's what happens when you seek
world domination- you gotta crack a few eggs.
So there's almost no point in talking about it. We're better off
discussing to what degree they violate international law. And on this
issue it's no question that Republicans completely take the cake. In
the last 30 years alone Dubya and Reagan are on par with the biggest
murderers in the world.
Exactly, America are almost in a perpetual state of war and it's viewed
as something normal and just.
Grover Norquist, the influential conservative activist, recently made some
very frank and sobering remarks about the U.S. military budget. Unlike many
conservatives, Mr. Norquist understands that American national security interests
are not served by the interventionist foreign policy mindset that has dominated
both political parties in recent decades. He also understands that there is
nothing “conservative” about incurring trillions of dollars in debt to engage
in hopeless nation-building exercises overseas.
Speaking at the Center for the National Interest last week, Norquist stated,
“We can afford to have an adequate national defense which keeps us free and
safe and keeps everybody afraid to throw a punch at us, as long as we don’t
make some of the decisions that previous administrations have, which is to overextend
ourselves overseas and think we can run foreign governments.”
He continued: “Bush decided to be the mayor of Baghdad rather than the president
of the United States. He decided to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan rather than
reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That had tremendous consequences…. Richard
Nixon said that America’s national defense needs are set in Moscow, meaning
that we wouldn’t have to spend so much if they weren’t shooting at us. The guys
who followed didn’t notice that the Soviet Union disappeared.”
When a prominent D.C. conservative like Grover Norquist makes such bold statements,
it shows that public support for a truly conservative foreign policy is growing.
The American people simply cannot stomach more wars and more debt, especially
with our domestic economy in tatters.
The American people should reject the hype about so-called defense cuts from
both side of the political spectrum. When the Obama administration calls for
an 18% increase in 2013 military spending, those who propose a 20% increase
portray this as a reduction!
Even the supposedly draconian cuts called for in the “sequestration” budget
bill would keep military spending at 2006 levels when adjusted for inflation,
which is about as high in terms of GDP as during World War II. It’s also more
than the top 13 foreign countries spend on defense combined. Furthermore, sequestration
only cuts military spending for one year after taking effect. In future years,
Congress is free to reinstate higher military spending levels — so under sequestration
the most drastic case would mean spending $5.2 trillion instead of $5.7 trillion
over the next decade.
Is there any amount of money that would satisfy the Pentagon hawks? Even
if we were to slash our military budget in half, America easily would remain
the world’s dominant military power. Our problems don’t result from a lack of
spending. They result from a lack of vision and a profound misunderstanding
of the single biggest threat to every American man, woman, and child: the federal
debt.
[Sep 01, 2012] Washington puts its money on proxy war by Nick Turse
"Washington is now planning to rely ever more heavily on drones and special-operations
forces to fight scattered global enemies on the cheap. A centerpiece of this new
American way of war is the outsourcing of fighting duties to local proxies around
the world."
In the 1980s, Washington began funneling aid to mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan
as part of a US proxy war against the Soviet Union. It was, in the minds of
America's Cold War leaders, a rare chance to bloody the Soviets, to give them
a taste of the sort of defeat the Vietnamese, with Soviet help, had inflicted
on Washington the decade before. In 1989, after years of bloody combat, the
Red Army did indeed limp out of Afghanistan in defeat.
Since late 2001, the United States has been fighting its former Afghan proxies
and their progeny. Now, after years of bloody combat, it's the US that's looking
to withdraw the bulk of its forces and once again employ proxies to secure its
interests there.
From Asia and Africa to the Middle East and the Americas, the administration
of US President Barack Obama is increasingly embracing a multifaceted, light-footprint
brand of warfare. Gone, for the moment at least, are the days of full-scale
invasions of the Eurasian mainland. Instead, Washington
is now planning to rely ever more heavily on drones and special-operations forces
to fight scattered global enemies on the cheap.A centerpiece
of this new American way of war is the outsourcing of fighting duties to local
proxies around the world.
While the United States is currently engaged in just one outright proxy war,
backing a multi-nation African force to battle Islamist militants in Somalia,
it's laying the groundwork for the extensive use of surrogate forces in the
future, training "native" troops to carry out missions - up to and including
outright warfare. With this in mind and under the auspices of the Pentagon and
the State Department, US military personnel now take part in near-constant joint
exercises and training missions around the world aimed at fostering alliances,
building coalitions, and whipping surrogate forces into shape to support US
national-security objectives.
While using slightly different methods in different regions,
the basic strategy is a global one in which the US will train, equip and advise
indigenous forces - generally from poor, underdeveloped nations - to do the
fighting (and dying) it doesn't want to do. In the process, as small an American
force as possible, including special-forces operatives and air support, will
be brought to bear to aid those surrogates.
Like drones, proxy warfare appears to offer an easy solution to complex problems.
But as Washington's 30-year debacle in Afghanistan indicates, the ultimate costs
may prove both unimaginable and unimaginably high.
Start with Afghanistan itself. For more than a decade, the US and its coalition
partners have been training Afghan security forces in the hopes that they would
take over the war there, defending US and allied interests as the American-led
international force draws down. Yet despite an expenditure of almost US$50 billion
on bringing it up to speed, the Afghan National Army and other security forces
have drastically underperformed any and all expectations, year after year.
One track of the US plan has been a little-talked-about proxy army run by
the Central Intelligence Agency. For years, the CIA has trained and employed
six clandestine militias that operate near the cities of Kandahar, Kabul and
Jalalabad as well as in Khost, Kunar and Paktika provinces. Working with US
special forces and controlled by Americans, these "Counter-Terror Pursuit Teams"
evidently operate free of any Afghan governmental supervision and have reportedly
carried out cross-border raids into Pakistan, offering their American patrons
a classic benefit of proxy warfare: plausible deniability.
This clandestine effort has also been supplemented by the creation of a massive
conventional indigenous security force. While officially under Afghan government
control, these military and police forces are almost entirely dependent on the
financial support of the US and allied governments for their continued existence.
Today, the Afghan National Security Forces officially number more than 343,000,
but only 7% of their army units and 9% of their police units are rated at the
highest level of effectiveness. By contrast, even after more than a decade of
large-scale Western aid, 95% of the forces' recruits are still functionally
illiterate.
Not surprisingly, this massive force, trained by high-priced private contractors,
Western European militaries and the United States, and backed by US and coalition
forces and their advanced weapons systems, has been unable to stamp out a lightly
armed, modest-sized, less-than-popular, rag-tag insurgency. One of the few tasks
this proxy force seems skilled at is shooting American and allied forces, quite
often their own trainers, in increasingly common "green-on-blue" attacks.
Adding insult to injury, this poor-performing,
coalition-killing force is expensive. Bought and paid for by
the United States and its coalition partners, it costs between $10 billion and
$12 billion each year to sustain in a country whose gross domestic product is
just $18 billion. Over the long term, such a situation is untenable.
Back to the future
Utilizing foreign surrogates is nothing new. Since ancient times, empires
and nation-states have employed foreign troops and indigenous forces to wage
war or have backed them when it suited their policy aims. By the 19th and 20th
centuries, the tactic had become de rigueur for colonial powers like
the French who employed Senegalese, Moroccan and other African forces in Indochina
and elsewhere, and the British who regularly used Nepalese Gurkhas to wage counterinsurgencies
in places ranging from Iraq and Malaya to Borneo.
By the time the United States began backing the mujahideen in Afghanistan,
it already had significant experience with proxy warfare and its perils. After
World War II, the US eagerly embraced foreign surrogates, generally in poor
and underdeveloped countries, in the name of the Cold War. These efforts included
the attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro via a proxy Cuban force that crashed and
burned at the Bay of Pigs; the building of a Hmong army in Laos that ultimately
lost to Communist forces there; and the bankrolling of a French war in Vietnam
that failed in 1954, and then the creation of a massive army in South Vietnam
that crumbled in 1975, to name just a few unsuccessful efforts.
A more recent proxy failure occurred in Iraq. For years after the 2003 invasion,
American policymakers uttered a standard mantra: "As Iraqis stand up, we will
stand down." Last year, those Iraqis basically walked off.
Between 2003 and 2011, the United States pumped tens of billions of dollars
into "reconstructing" the country, with about $20 billion of it going to build
the Iraqi security forces. This mega-force of hundreds of thousands of soldiers
and police was created from scratch to prop up the successors to the government
that the United States overthrew. It was trained by and fought with the Americans
and their coalition partners, but that all came to an end last December.
Despite Obama administration efforts to base thousands or tens of thousands
of troops in Iraq for years to come, the Iraqi government spurned Washington's
overtures and sent the US military packing. Today, the Iraqi government supports
the Assad regime in Syria, and has a warm and increasingly close relationship
with longtime US enemy Iran. According to Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency,
the two countries have even discussed expanding their military ties.
African shadow wars
Despite a history of sinking billions into proxy armies that collapsed, walked
away, or morphed into enemies, Washington is currently pursuing plans for proxy
warfare across the globe, perhaps nowhere more aggressively than in Africa.
Under President Obama, operations in Africa have accelerated far beyond the
more limited interventions under his predecessor George W Bush. These include
last year's war in Libya; the expansion of a growing network of supply depots,
small camps, and airfields; a regional drone campaign with missions run out
of Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the Indian Ocean archipelago nation Seychelles; a
flotilla of 30 ships in that ocean supporting regional operations; a massive
influx of cash for counter-terrorism operations across East Africa; a possible
old-fashioned air war, carried out on the sly in the region using manned aircraft;
and a special-ops expeditionary force (bolstered by State Department experts)
dispatched to help capture or kill Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph
Kony and his senior commanders. (This mission against Kony is seen by some experts
as a cover for a developing proxy war between the US and the Islamist government
of Sudan - which is accused of helping to support the LRA - and Islamists more
generally.) And this only begins to scratch the surface of Washington's fast-expanding
plans and activities in the region.
In Somalia, Washington has already involved itself in a multi-pronged military
and CIA campaign against Islamist al-Shabaab militants that includes intelligence
operations, training for Somali agents, a secret prison, helicopter attacks
and commando raids. Now, it is also backing a classic proxy war using African
surrogates. The United States has become, as the Los Angeles Times put it recently,
"the driving force behind the fighting in Somalia", as it trains and equips
African foot soldiers to battle Shabaab militants, so US forces won't have to.
In a country where more than 90 Americans were killed and wounded in a 1993
debacle now known by the shorthand "Black Hawk Down", today's fighting and dying
have been outsourced to African soldiers.
This year, for example, elite Force Recon marines from the Special Purpose
Marine Air Ground Task Force 12 (or, as a mouthful of an abbreviation, SPMAGTF-12)
trained soldiers from the Uganda People's Defense Force. It, in turn, supplies
the majority of the troops to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)
currently protecting the US-supported government in that country's capital,
Mogadishu.
This spring, marines from SPMAGTF-12 also trained soldiers from the Burundi
National Defense Force (BNDF), the second-largest contingent in Somalia. In
April and May, members of Task Force Raptor, 3rd Squadron, 124th Cavalry Regiment
of the Texas National Guard took part in a separate training mission with the
BNDF in Mudubugu, Burundi. SPMAGTF-12 has also sent its trainers to Djibouti,
another nation involved in the Somali mission, to work with an elite army unit
there.
At the same time, US Army troops have taken part in training members of Sierra
Leone's military in preparation for their deployment to Somalia later this year.
In June, US Army Africa commander Major-General David Hogg spoke encouragingly
of the future of Sierra Leone's forces in conjunction with another US ally,
Kenya, which invaded Somalia last autumn (and just recently joined the African
Union mission there). "You will join the Kenyan forces in southern Somalia to
continue to push al-Shabaab and other miscreants from Somalia so it can be free
of tyranny and terrorism and all the evil that comes with it," he said. "We
know that you are ready and trained. You will be equipped and you will accomplish
this mission with honor and dignity."
Readying allied militaries for deployment to Somalia is, however, just a
fraction of the story when it comes to training indigenous forces in Africa.
This year, for example, marines traveled to Liberia to focus on teaching riot-control
techniques to that country's military as part of what is otherwise a State Department-directed
effort to rebuild its security forces.
In fact, Colonel Tom Davis of US Africa Command (AFRICOM) recently told TomDispatch
that his command had held or planned 14 major joint training exercises for 2012
and a similar number were scheduled for 2013. This year's efforts include operations
in Morocco, Cameroon, Gabon, Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Senegal and Nigeria,
including, for example, Western Accord 2012, a multilateral exercise involving
the armed forces of Senegal, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Gambia and France.
Even this, however, doesn't encompass the full breadth of US training and
advising missions in Africa. "We ... conduct some type of military training
or military-to-military engagement or activity with nearly every country on
the African continent," Davis wrote.
Our American proxies
Africa may, at present, be the prime location for the development of proxy
warfare, American-style, but it's hardly the only locale where the United States
is training indigenous forces to aid US foreign-policy aims. This year, the
Pentagon has also ramped up operations in Central and South America as well
as the Caribbean.
In Honduras, for example, small teams of US troops are working with local
forces to escalate the drug war there. Working out of Forward Operating Base
Mocoron and other remote camps, the US military is supporting Honduran operations
by way of the methods it honed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
US forces have also taken part in joint operations with Honduran troops as
part of a training mission dubbed Beyond the Horizon 2012, while Green Berets
have been assisting Honduran special-operations forces in anti-smuggling operations.
Additionally, an increasingly militarized US Drug Enforcement Administration
sent a Foreign-Deployed Advisory Support Team, originally created to disrupt
the poppy trade in Afghanistan, to aid Honduras' Tactical Response Team, that
country's elite counter-narcotics unit.
The militarization and foreign deployment of US law-enforcement operatives
was also evident in Tradewinds 2012, a training exercise held in Barbados in
June. There, members of the US military and civilian law-enforcement agencies
joined with counterparts from Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize,
Canada, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St
Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad
and Tobago to improve cooperation for "complex multinational security operations".
Far less visible have been training efforts by US special-operations forces
in Guyana, Uruguay and Paraguay. In June, special-ops troops also took part
in Fuerzas Comando, an eight-day "competition" in which the elite forces from
21 countries, including the Bahamas, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia,
Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana,
Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago and Uruguay,
faced off in tests of physical fitness, marksmanship and tactical capabilities.
This year, the US military has also conducted training exercises in Guatemala,
sponsored "partnership-building" missions in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador,
Peru and Panama, and reached an agreement to carry out 19 "activities" with
the Colombian army over the next year, including joint military exercises.
The proxy pivot
Coverage of the Obama administration's much-publicized strategic "pivot"
to Asia has focused on the creation of yet more bases and new naval deployments
to the region. The military (which has dropped the word "pivot" for "rebalancing")
is, however, also planning and carrying out numerous exercises and training
missions with regional allies. In fact, the US Navy and Marines Corps alone
already reportedly engage in more than 170 bilateral and multilateral exercises
with Asia-Pacific nations each year.
One of the largest of these efforts took place in and around the Hawaiian
Islands from late June through early August. Dubbed RIMPAC 2012, the exercise
brought together more than 40 ships and submarines, more than 200 aircraft,
and 25,000 personnel from 22 nations, including Australia, India, Indonesia,
Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand
and Tonga.
Almost 7,000 American troops also joined about 3,400 Thai forces, as well
as military personnel from Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea,
as part of Cobra Gold 2012. In addition, US marines took part in Hamel 2012,
a multinational training exercise involving members of the Australian and New
Zealand militaries, while other American troops joined the Armed Forces of the
Philippines for Exercise Balikatan.
The effects of the "pivot" are also evident in the fact that once-neutralist
India now holds more than 50 military exercises with the United States each
year - more than any other country in the world.
"Our partnership with India is a key part of our rebalance to the Asia-Pacific
and, we believe, to the broader security and prosperity of the 21st century,"
said US Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter on a recent trip to the subcontinent.
Just how broad is evident in the fact that India is taking part in America's
proxy effort in Somalia. In recent years, the Indian Navy has emerged as an
"important contributor" to the international counter-piracy effort off that
African country's coast, according to Andrew Shapiro of the US State Department's
Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.
Peace by proxy
India's neighbor Bangladesh offers a further window into US efforts to build
proxy forces to serve American interests.
This year, US and Bangladeshi forces took part in an exercise focused on
logistics, planning and tactical training, codenamed Shanti Doot-3. The mission
was notable in that it was part of a US State Department program, supported
and executed by the Pentagon, known as the Global Peace Operations Initiative.
First implemented under George W Bush, GPOI provides cash-strapped nations
funds, equipment, logistical assistance and training to enable their militaries
to become "peacekeepers" around the world. Under Bush, from the time the program
was established in 2004 through 2008, more than $374 million was spent to train
and equip foreign troops. Under President Obama, Congress has funded the program
to the tune of $393 million, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by
the State Department.
In a speech this year, the State Department's Andrew Shapiro told a Washington,
DC, audience that "GPOI is particularly focusing a great deal of its efforts
to support the training and equipping of peacekeepers deploying to ... Somalia"
and had provided "tens of millions of dollars' worth of equipment" for countries
deploying there.
In a weblog post he went into more detail, lauding US efforts to train Djiboutian
troops to serve as peacekeepers in Somalia and noting that the US had also provided
impoverished Djibouti with radar equipment and patrol boats for offshore activities.
"Djibouti is also central to our efforts to combat piracy," he wrote, "as
it is on the front line of maritime threats including piracy in the Gulf of
Aden and surrounding waters."
Djibouti and Bangladesh are hardly unique. Under the auspices of the Global
Peace Operations Initiative, the US has partnered with 62 nations around the
globe, according to statistics provided by the State Department. These proxies-in-training
are, not surprisingly, some of the poorest nations in their respective regions,
if not the entire planet. They include Benin, Ethiopia, Malawi and Togo in Africa,
Nepal and Pakistan in Asia, and Guatemala and Nicaragua in the Americas.
The changing face of empire
With ongoing military operations in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin
America, the Obama administration has embraced a six-point program for light-footprint
warfare relying heavily on special-operations forces, drones, spies, civilian
partners, cyber-warfare and proxy fighters. Of all the facets of this new way
of war, the training and employment of proxies has generally been the least
noticed, even though reliance on foreign forces is considered one of its prime
selling points.
As Shapiro put it: "The importance of these missions to the security of the
United States is often little appreciated ... To put it clearly: When these
peacekeepers deploy, it means that US forces are less likely to be called on
to intervene."
In other words, to put it even more clearly, more dead locals, fewer dead
Americans.
The evidence for this conventional wisdom, however, is lacking. And failures
to learn from history in this regard have been ruinous. The training, advising
and outfitting of a proxy force in Vietnam drew the United States deeper and
deeper into that doomed conflict, leading to tens of thousands of dead Americans
and millions of dead Vietnamese. Support for Afghan proxies during their decade-long
battle against the Soviet Union led directly to the current disastrous decade-plus
US war in Afghanistan.
Right now, the US is once again training, advising and conducting joint exercises
all over the world with proxy war on its mind and the concept of "unintended
consequences" nowhere in sight in Washington. Whether today's proxies end up
working for or against Washington's interests or even become tomorrow's enemies
remains to be seen. But with so much training going on in so many destabilized
regions, and so many proxy forces being armed in so many places, the chances
of blowback grow greater by the day.
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning
journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, in The Nation, and
regularly at TomDispatch. He is the author/editor of several books, including
the recently published Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare,
2001-2050 (with Tom Engelhardt). This piece is the latest article in his
new series on the changing face of American empire, which is being underwritten
by Lannan Foundation. You can follow him on Tumblr.
But it's never too late to ask questions, to scrutinize sources. Asking questions
doesn't make you a cheerleader for Assad – that's a false argument. It just makes
you less susceptible to spin. The good news is, there's a skeptic born every minute.
The media have been too passive when it comes to Syrian opposition sources,
without scrutinizing their backgrounds and their political connections. Time
for a closer look …
Comments: 269
A nightmare is unfolding across Syria, in the homes of al-Heffa and the streets
of Houla. And we all know how the story ends: with thousands of soldiers and
civilians killed, towns and families destroyed, and President Assad beaten to
death in a ditch.
This is the story of the Syrian war, but there is another story to be told.
A tale less bloody, but nevertheless important. This is a story about the storytellers:
the spokespeople, the "experts on Syria", the "democracy activists". The statement
makers. The people who "urge" and "warn" and "call for action".
It's a tale about some of the most quoted members of the Syrian opposition
and their connection to the Anglo-American opposition creation business. The
mainstream news media have, in the main, been remarkably passive when it comes
to Syrian sources: billing them simply as "official spokesmen" or "pro-democracy
campaigners" without, for the most part, scrutinising their statements, their
backgrounds or their political connections.
It's important to stress: to investigate the background of a Syrian spokesperson
is not to doubt the sincerity of his or her opposition to Assad. But a passionate
hatred of the Assad regime is no guarantee of independence. Indeed, a number
of key figures in the Syrian opposition movement are long-term exiles who were
receiving US government funding to undermine the Assad government long before
the Arab spring broke out.
Though it is not yet stated US government policy to oust Assad by force,
these spokespeople are vocal advocates of foreign military intervention in Syria
and thus natural allies of well-known US neoconservatives who supported Bush's
invasion of Iraq and are now pressuring the Obama administration to intervene.
As we will see, several of these spokespeople have found support, and in some
cases developed long and lucrative relationships with advocates of military
intervention on both sides of the Atlantic.
"The sand is running out of the hour glass," said Hillary Clinton on Sunday.
So, as the fighting in Syria intensifies, and
Russian warships set sail for Tartus, it's high time to take a closer look
at those who are speaking out on behalf of the Syrian people.
The Syrian National Council
The most quoted of the opposition spokespeople are the official representatives
of the Syrian National Council. The SNC is not the only Syrian opposition group
– but it is generally recognised as "the main opposition coalition" (BBC). The
Washington Times describes it as "an umbrella group of rival factions based
outside Syria". Certainly the SNC is the opposition group that's had the closest
dealings with western powers – and has called for foreign intervention from
the early stages of the uprising. In February of this year, at the opening of
the Friends of Syria summit in Tunisia, William Hague
declared: "I will meet leaders of the Syrian National Council in a few minutes'
time … We, in common with other nations, will now treat them and recognise them
as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people."
The most senior of the SNC's official spokespeople is the Paris-based Syrian
academic Bassma Kodmani.
Bassma Kodmani
Kodmani is a member of the executive bureau and head of foreign affairs,
Syrian National Council. Kodmani is close to the centre of the SNC power structure,
and one of the council's most vocal spokespeople. "No dialogue with the ruling
regime is possible. We can only discuss how to move on to a different political
system,"
she declared this week. And here she is,
quoted by the newswire AFP: "The next step needs to be a resolution under
Chapter VII, which allows for the use of all legitimate means, coercive means,
embargo on arms, as well as the use of force to oblige the regime to comply."
This statement translates into the headline
"Syrians call for armed peacekeepers" (Australia's Herald Sun). When large-scale
international military action is being called for, it seems only reasonable
to ask: who exactly is calling for it? We can say, simply, "an official SNC
spokesperson," or we can look a little closer.
This year was Kodmani's second Bilderberg. At the 2008 conference, Kodmani
was listed as French; by 2012, her Frenchness had fallen away and she was listed
simply as "international" – her homeland had become the world of international
relations.
Back a few years, in 2005, Kodmani was working for the
Ford Foundation in Cairo, where
she was director of their governance and international co-operation programme.
The Ford Foundation is a vast organisation, headquartered in New York, and Kodmani
was already fairly senior. But she was about to jump up a league.
The CFR is an elite US foreign policy thinktank, and the Arab Reform Initiative
is described on its
website as a "CFR Project" . More specifically, the ARI was initiated by
a group within the CFR called the "US/Middle
East Project" – a body of senior diplomats, intelligence officers and financiers,
the stated aim of which is to undertake regional "policy analysis" in order
"to prevent conflict and promote stability". The US/Middle East Project pursues
these goals under the guidance of an international board chaired by General
(Ret.) Brent Scowcroft.
Brent Scowcroft
(chairman emeritus) is a former national security adviser to the US president
– he took over the role from Henry Kissinger. Sitting alongside Scowcroft of
the international board is his fellow geo-strategist, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who
succeeded him as the national security adviser, and Peter Sutherland, the chairman
of Goldman Sachs International. So, as early as 2005, we've got a senior wing
of the western intelligence/banking establishment selecting Kodmani to run a
Middle East research project. In September of that year, Kodmani was made full-time
director of the programme. Earlier in 2005, the
CFR assigned "financial oversight" of the project to the Centre for European
Reform (CER). In come the British.
The CER is overseen by Lord Kerr, the deputy chairman of Royal Dutch Shell.
Kerr is a former head of the diplomatic service and is a senior adviser at Chatham
House (a thinktank showcasing the best brains of the British diplomatic establishment).
In charge of the CER on a day-to-day basis is
Charles Grant,
former defence editor of the Economist, and these days a member of the European
Council on Foreign Relations, a "pan-European thinktank" packed with diplomats,
industrialists, professors and prime ministers. On its
list of members
you'll find the name: "Bassma Kodmani (France/Syria) – Executive Director, Arab
Reform Initiative".
Another name on the list: George Soros – the financier whose non-profit "Open
Society Foundations" is
a primary funding source of the ECFR. At this level, the worlds of banking,
diplomacy, industry, intelligence and the various policy institutes and foundations
all mesh together, and there, in the middle of it all, is Kodmani.
The point is, Kodmani is not some random "pro-democracy activist" who happens
to have found herself in front of a microphone. She has impeccable international
diplomacy credentials: she holds the position of
research
director at the Académie Diplomatique Internationale – "an independent and
neutral institution dedicated to promoting modern diplomacy". The Académie is
headed by Jean-Claude Cousseran, a former head of the DGSE – the French foreign
intelligence service.
A picture is emerging of Kodmani as a trusted lieutenant of the Anglo-American
democracy-promotion industry. Her "province of origin" (according
to the SNC website) is Damascus, but she has close and long-standing professional
relationships with precisely those powers she's calling upon to intervene in
Syria.
And many of her spokesmen colleagues are equally well-connected.
Radwan Ziadeh
Another often quoted SNC representative is
Radwan Ziadeh – director
of foreign relations at the Syrian National Council. Ziadeh has an impressive
CV: he's a senior fellow at the federally funded Washington
thinktank, the US Institute of Peace (the USIP Board of Directors is packed
with alumni of the defence department and the national security council; its
president is Richard Solomon, former adviser to Kissinger at the NSC).
In February this year, Ziadeh joined an elite bunch of Washington hawks to
sign
a letter calling upon Obama to intervene in Syria: his fellow signatories
include James Woolsey (former CIA chief), Karl Rove (Bush Jr's handler), Clifford
May (Committee on the Present Danger) and Elizabeth Cheney, former head of the
Pentagon's Iran-Syria Operations Group.
Ziadeh is a relentless organiser, a blue-chip Washington insider with links
to some of the most powerful establishment thinktanks. Ziadeh's connections
extend all the way to London. In 2009 he became a
visiting
fellow at Chatham House, and in June of last year he featured on the panel
at one of their events – "Envisioning Syria's Political
Future" – sharing a platform with fellow SNC spokesman Ausama Monajed (more
on Monajed below) and SNC member Najib Ghadbian.
Ghadbian was
identified
by the Wall Street Journal as an early intermediary between the US government
and the Syrian opposition in exile: "An initial contact between the White House
and NSF [National Salvation Front] was forged by Najib Ghadbian, a University
of Arkansas political scientist." This was back in 2005. The watershed year.
These days, Ghadbian is a member of the general secretariat of the SNC, and
is on the advisory board of a Washington-based policy body called the
Syrian Center for Political
and Strategic Studies (SCPSS) – an organisation co-founded by Ziadeh.
Ziadeh has been making connections like this for years. Back in 2008, Ziadeh
took part in a meeting of opposition figures in a Washington government building:
a mini-conference called "Syria In-Transition".
The meeting was co-sponsored by a US-based body called the Democracy Council
and a UK-based organisation called the Movement for Justice and Development
(MJD). It was a big day for the MJD – their chairman, Anas Al-Abdah, had travelled
to Washington from Britain for the event, along with their director of public
relations. Here,
from the MJD's
website, is a description of the day: "The conference saw an exceptional
turn out as the allocated hall was packed with guests from the House of Representatives
and the Senate, representatives of studies centres, journalists and Syrian expatriats
[sic] in the USA."
The day opened with a keynote speech by James Prince, head of the Democracy
Council. Ziadeh was on a panel chaired by Joshua Muravchik (the ultra-interventionist
author of the 2006 op-ed "Bomb Iran"). The topic of the discussion was "The
Emergence of Organized Opposition". Sitting beside Ziadeh on the panel was the
public relations director of the MJD – a man who would later become his fellow
SNC spokesperson – Ausama Monajed.
Ausama Monajed
Along with Kodmani and Ziadeh, Ausama (or sometimes Osama) Monajed is one
of the most important SNC spokespeople. There are others, of course – the SNC
is a big beast and includes the Muslim Brotherhood. The opposition to Assad
is wide-ranging, but these are some of the key voices. There are other official
spokespeople with long political careers, like George Sabra of the Syrian Democratic
People's party – Sabra has suffered arrest and lengthy imprisonment in his fight
against the
"repressive and totalitarian regime in Syria". And there are other opposition
voices outside the SNC, such as the writer Michel Kilo, who speaks eloquently
of the violence tearing apart his country: "Syria is being destroyed – street
after street, city after city, village after village. What kind of solution
is that? In order for a small group of people to remain in power, the whole
country is being destroyed."
But there's no doubt that the primary opposition body is the SNC, and Kodmani,
Ziadeh and Monajed are often to be found representing it. Monajed frequently
crops up as a commentator on TV news channels.
Here he is on the
BBC, speaking from their Washington bureau. Monajed doesn't sugar-coat his
message: "We are watching civilians being slaughtered and kids being slaughtered
and killed and women being raped on the TV screens every day."
Meanwhile, over
on Al Jazeera, Monajed talks about "what's really happening, in reality,
on the ground" – about "the militiamen of Assad" who "come and rape their women,
slaughter their children, and kill their elderly".
Monajed
turned up, just a few days ago, as a blogger on Huffington Post UK, where
he explained, at length: "Why the World Must Intervene in Syria" – calling for
"direct military assistance" and "foreign military aid". So, again, a fair question
might be: who is this spokesman calling for military intervention?
Monajed is a member of the SNC, adviser to its president, and according to
his
SNC biography, "the Founder and Director of Barada Television", a pro-opposition
satellite channel based in Vauxhall, south London. In 2008, a few months after
attending Syria In-Transition conference, Monajed was back in Washington, invited
to lunch with George W Bush, along with a handful of other favoured dissidents
(you
can see Monajed in the souvenir photo, third from the right, in the red
tie, near Condoleezza Rice – up the other end from Garry Kasparov).
At this time, in 2008, the
US state
department knew Monajed as "director of public relations for the Movement
for Justice and Development (MJD), which leads the struggle for peaceful and
democratic change in Syria".
Let's look closer at the MJD. Last year,
the Washington Post picked up a story from WikiLeaks, which had published
a mass of leaked diplomatic cables.
These cables appear to show a remarkable flow of money from the US state
department to the British-based Movement for Justice and Development. According
to the Washington Post's report: "Barada TV is closely affiliated with the Movement
for Justice and Development, a London-based network of Syrian exiles. Classified
US diplomatic cables show that the state department has funnelled as much as
$6m to the group since 2006 to operate the satellite channel and finance other
activities inside Syria."
A state department spokesman responded to this story by saying: "Trying to
promote a transformation to a more democratic process in this society is not
undermining necessarily the existing government." And they're right, it's not
"necessarily" that.
When asked about the state department money, Monajed himself said that he
"could not confirm" US state department funding for Barada TV, but said: "I
didn't receive a penny myself." Malik al -Abdeh, until very recently Barada
TV's editor-in-chief insisted: "we have had no direct dealings with the US state
department". The meaning of the sentence turns on that word "direct". It is
worth noting that Malik al Abdeh also happens to be one of the founders of the
Movement for Justice and Development (the recipient of the state department
$6m, according to the leaked cable). And he's the brother of the chairman, Anas
Al-Abdah. He's also the
co-holder of the MJD trademark: What
Malik al Abdeh does admit is that Barada TV gets a large chunk of its funding
from an American non-profit organisation: the Democracy Council. One of the
co-sponsors (with the MJD) of Syria In-Transition mini-conference. So what we
see, in 2008, at the same meeting, are the leaders of precisely those organisations
identified in the Wiki:eaks cables as the conduit (the Democracy Council) and
recipient (the MJD) of large amounts of state department money.
The Democracy
Council (a US-based grant distributor) lists the state department as one
of its sources of funding. How it works is this: the Democracy Council serves
as a grant-administering intermediary between the state department's "Middle
East Partnership Initiative" and "local partners" (such as Barada TV). As the
Washington Post reports:
"Several US diplomatic cables from the embassy in Damascus reveal that
the Syrian exiles received money from a State Department program called
the Middle East Partnership Initiative. According to the cables, the State
Department funnelled money to the exile group via the Democracy Council,
a Los Angeles-based nonprofit."
The same report highlights a 2009 cable from the US Embassy in Syria that
says that the Democracy Council received $6.3m from the state department to
run a Syria-related programme, the "Civil Society Strengthening Initiative".
The cable describes this as "a discrete collaborative effort between the Democracy
Council and local partners" aimed at producing, amongst other things, "various
broadcast concepts." According to the Washington Post: "Other cables make clear
that one of those concepts was Barada TV."
This is nothing new. Go back a while to early 2006, and you have the state
department announcing a new "funding opportunity" called the "Syria
Democracy Program". On offer, grants worth "$5m in Federal Fiscal Year 2006".
The aim of the grants? "To accelerate the work of reformers in Syria."
These days, the cash is flowing in faster than ever. At the beginning of
June 2012, the
Syrian Business Forum was launched in Doha by opposition leaders including
Wael Merza (SNC secretary general). "This fund has been established to support
all components of the revolution in Syria," said Merza. The size of the fund?
Some $300m. It's by no means clear where the money has come from, although Merza
"hinted at strong financial support from Gulf Arab states for the new fund"
(Al Jazeera). At the launch, Merza said that about $150m had already been spent,
in part on the Free Syrian Army.
Merza's group of Syrian businessmen made an appearance at a World Economic
Forum conference titled the "Platform
for International Co-operation" held in Istanbul in November 2011. All part
of the process whereby the SNC has grown in reputation, to become, in the words
of William Hague, "a legitimate representative of the Syrian people" – and able,
openly, to handle this much funding.
Building legitimacy – of opposition, of representation, of intervention –
is the essential propaganda battle.
In a USA Today op-ed written in February this year, Ambassador Dennis Ross
declared: "It is time to raise the status of the Syrian National Council". What
he wanted, urgently, is "to create an aura of inevitability about the SNC as
the alternative to Assad." The aura of inevitability. Winning the battle in
advance.
A key combatant in this battle for hearts and minds is the American journalist
and Daily Telegraph blogger, Michael Weiss.
Michael Weiss
One of the most widely quoted western experts on Syria – and an enthusiast
for western intervention – Michael Weiss echoes Ambassador Ross when
he says: "Military intervention in Syria isn't so much a matter of preference
as an inevitability."
Some of Weiss's interventionist writings can be found on a Beirut-based,
Washington-friendly website called "NOW Lebanon" – whose "NOW Syria" section
is an important source of Syrian updates. NOW Lebanon was set up in 2007 by
Saatchi & Saatchi executive
Eli Khoury. Khoury has been described by the advertising industry as a "strategic
communications specialist, specialising in corporate and government image and
brand development".
Weiss told
NOW Lebanon, back in May, that thanks to the influx of weapons to Syrian
rebels "we've
already begun to see some results." He showed a similar approval of military
developments a few months earlier, in
a piece for the New Republic: "In the past several weeks, the Free Syrian
Army and other independent rebel brigades have made great strides" – whereupon,
as any blogger might, he laid out his "Blueprint for a Military Intervention
in Syria".
But Weiss is not only a blogger. He's also the director of communications
and public relations at the
Henry
Jackson Society, an ultra-ultra-hawkish foreign policy thinktank.
Weiss's original
report was re-named "Safe Area for Syria" – and ended up on the official
syriancouncil.org website, as part of their military bureau's
strategic literature. The repurposing of the HJS report was undertaken by
the founder and executive director of the
Strategic Research and Communication Centre (SRCC) – one Ausama Monajed.
So, the founder of Barada TV, Ausama Monajed, edited Weiss's report, published
it through his own organisation (the SRCC) and passed it on to the Syrian National
Council, with the support of the Henry Jackson Society.
The relationship couldn't be closer. Monajed even ends up handling inquiries
for "press
interviews with Michael Weiss". Weiss is not the only strategist to have
sketched out the roadmap to this war (many thinktanks have thought it out, many
hawks have talked it up), but some of the sharpest detailing is his.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
The justification for the "inevitable" military intervention is the savagery
of President Assad's regime: the atrocities, the shelling, the human rights
abuses. Information is crucial here, and one source above all has been providing
us with data about Syria. It is quoted at every turn: "The head of the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights
told VOA [Voice of America] that fighting and shelling killed at least 12
people in Homs province."
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is commonly used as a standalone
source for news and statistics. Just this week, news agency AFP
carried this story: "Syrian forces pounded Aleppo and Deir Ezzor provinces
as at least 35 people were killed on Sunday across the country, among them 17
civilians, a watchdog reported." Various atrocities and casualty numbers are
listed, all from a single source: "Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told
AFP by phone."
Statistic after horrific statistic pours from "the Britain-based Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights" (AP). It's hard to find a news report about Syria that doesn't
cite them. But who are they? "They" are Rami Abdulrahman (or Rami Abdel Rahman),
who lives in Coventry.
According to
a Reuters report in December of last year: "When he isn't fielding calls
from international media, Abdulrahman is a few minutes down the road at his
clothes shop, which he runs with his wife."
When the Guardian's
Middle East live blog cited "Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights" it also linked to
a sceptical article in the Modern Tokyo Times – an article which suggested
news outlets could be a bit "more objective about their sources" when quoting
"this so-called entity", the SOHR.
That name, the "Syrian Observatory of Human Rights", sound so grand, so unimpeachable,
so objective. And yet when Abdulrahman and his "Britain-based NGO" (AFP/NOW
Lebanon) are the sole source for so many news stories about such an important
subject, it would seem reasonable to submit this body to a little more scrutiny
than it's had to date.
The Observatory is by no means the only Syrian news source to be quoted freely
with little or no scrutiny …
Hamza Fakher
The relationship between Ausama Monajed, the SNC, the Henry Jackson hawks
and an unquestioning media can be seen in the case of Hamza Fakher. On 1 January,
Nick Cohen wrote in the Observer: "To grasp the scale of the barbarism,
listen to Hamza Fakher, a pro-democracy activist, who is one of the most reliable
sources on the crimes the regime's news blackout hides."
He goes on to recount Fakher's horrific tales of torture and mass murder.
Fakher tells Cohen of a new hot-plate torture technique that he's heard about:
"imagine all the melting flesh reaching the bone before the detainee falls on
the plate". The following day, Shamik Das, writing on "evidence-based" progressive
blog Left Foot Forward, quotes the same source:
"Hamza Fakher, a pro-democracy activist, describes the sickening reality …"
– and the account of atrocities given to Cohen is repeated.
So, who exactly is this "pro-democracy activist", Hamza Fakher?
Fakher, it turns out, is the co-author of
Revolution in Danger , a "Henry Jackson Society Strategic Briefing", published
in February of this year. He co-wrote this briefing paper with the Henry Jackson
Society's communications director, Michael Weiss. And when he's not co-writing
Henry Jackson Society strategic briefings, Fakher is the communication manager
of the London-based Strategic Research and Communication
Centre (SRCC). According to their website, "He joined the centre in 2011
and has been in charge of the centre's communication strategy and products."
As you may recall, the SRCC is run by one Ausama Monajed: "Mr Monajed founded
the centre in 2010. He is widely quoted and interviewed in international press
and media outlets. He previously worked as communication consultant in Europe
and the US and formerly served as the director of Barada Television …".
Monajed is Fakher's boss.
If this wasn't enough, for a final Washington twist, on the board of the
Strategic Research and Communication Centre sits Murhaf Jouejati,
a professor at the National
Defence University in DC – "the premier center for Joint Professional Military
Education (JPME)" which is "under the direction of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs
of Staff."
If you happen to be planning a trip to Monajed's "Strategic Research and
Communication Centre", you'll find it here: Strategic Research & Communication
Centre, Office 36, 88-90 Hatton Garden, Holborn, London EC1N 8PN.
Office 36 at 88-90 Hatton Garden is also where you'll find the London headquarters
of The Fake Tan Company, Supercar 4 U Limited, Moola loans (a "trusted loans
company"), Ultimate Screeding (for all your screeding needs), and The London
School of Attraction – "a London-based training company which helps men develop
the skills and confidence to meet and attract women." And about a hundred other
businesses besides. It's a
virtual office. There's something oddly appropriate about this. A "communication
centre" that doesn't even have a centre – a grand name but no physical substance.
That's the reality of Hamza Fakher. On 27 May, Shamik Das of Left Foot Forward
quotes
again from Fakher's account of atrocities, which he now describes as an
"eyewitness account" (which Cohen never said it was) and which by now has hardened
into "the record of the Assad regime".
So, a report of atrocities given by a Henry Jackson Society strategist, who
is the communications manager of Mosafed's PR department, has acquired the gravitas
of a historical "record".
This is not to suggest that the account of atrocities must be untrue, but
how many of those who give it currency are scrutinising its origins?
This has been brewing for a time. The sheer energy and meticulous planning
that's gone into this change of regime – it's breathtaking. The soft power and
political reach of the big foundations and policy bodies is vast, but scrutiny
is no respecter of fancy titles and fellowships and "strategy briefings". Executive
director of what, it asks. Having "democracy" or "human rights" in your job
title doesn't give you a free pass.
And if you're a "communications director" it means your words should be weighed
extra carefully. Weiss and Fakher, both communications directors – PR professionals.
At the Chatham House event in June 2011, Monajed is listed as: "Ausama Monajed,
director of communications, National Initiative for Change" and he was head
of PR for the MJD. The creator of the news website NOW Lebanon, Eli Khoury,
is a Saatchi advertising executive. These communications directors are working
hard to create what Tamara Wittes called a "positive brand".
They're selling the idea of military intervention and regime change, and
the mainstream news is hungry to buy. Many of the "activists" and spokespeople
representing the Syrian opposition are closely (and in many cases financially)
interlinked with the US and London – the very people who would be doing the
intervening. Which means information and statistics from these sources isn't
necessarily pure news – it's a sales pitch, a PR campaign.
But it's never too late to ask questions, to scrutinise sources. Asking questions
doesn't make you a cheerleader for Assad – that's a false argument. It just
makes you less susceptible to spin. The good news is, there's a sceptic born
every minute.
mcneilio 12 July 2012 4:01PM
They're selling the idea of military intervention and regime change,
and the mainstream news is hungry to buy. Many of the "activists" and
spokespeople representing the Syrian opposition are closely (and in
many cases financially) interlinked with the US and London – the very
people who would be doing the intervening. Which means information and
statistics from these sources isn't necessarily pure news – it's a sales
pitch, a PR campaign.
In so many cases, newspapers make allegations that military intervention
has ulterior motives, and often that probably is the case, but they allege
this without presenting evidence to prove it.
This article offers a wealth of well researched proof which should make
us all consider any possible intervention in Syria in a new light.
This is journalism at its best, bravo.
stewbarnes:
You criticize others for quoting from sources
without going into depth about those sources? I'd never heard of the Modern
Tokyo Times, so I googled it and went to the homepage. The first story it
presented me with was "Bosnia Connection: Bill Clinton and Islamist ratlines
in Bosnia assisted September 11". Nice source...
You criticize others for quoting from sources without going into depth
about those sources? I'd never heard of the Modern Tokyo Times, so I googled
it and went to the homepage. The first story it presented me with was "Bosnia
Connection: Bill Clinton and Islamist ratlines in Bosnia assisted September
11". Nice source...
I had a read of the article and can see nothing with it myself. It is
just going into the link with Islamists fighting in Bosnia and Kosovo and
their links to the 9/11 attacks. They were obviously fighting on the same
side as the west were and the west was not too bothered about that either
just like in Afghanistan in the 1980's. The article is sourced at the bottom
of the page from newsreports and youtube clips of other news reports from
the like of CNN and Sky news amongst others.
RedMangos 12 July 2012 4:48PM
Looks like the Syrian opposition has some Ahmed Chalabi types. Remember
him?
nemossister
The information in the above article provides a new way of viewing this
one which was up earlier: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middle-east-live/2012/jul/12/syria-crisis-ambassador-defects-live
Because Al-Fares the 'defecting ambassador' could also be seen as an 'outsider'
who would have come into contact with Anglo-American 'democracy promoters'
during his time in Iraq. Even the Guardian have taken it from a 'headline
piece' and replaced it with a different take.... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/12/syria-punish-defect-nawaf-fares
It's becoming more and more obvious that there is a lot more going on behind
the scenes with regard to the war in Syria than is currently being presented
in the mainstream press and tv reports. It's looking very sinister indeed.
lacilir
Excellent article. This has been brewing for a time. Yes it has as US General
(ret.) Wesley Clerk said in 2007:
Six weeks later, I saw the same officer, and asked: “Why haven’t we
attacked Iraq? Are we still going to attack Iraq?” He said: “Sir, it’s
worse than that. He said – he pulled up a piece of paper off his desk
– he said: “I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office.
It says we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries
in five years – we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going
to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”
12 July 2012 5:08PM "But it's never too late to ask questions, to scrutinise
sources." Afraid it is. The Neocon lie machine has built up too much momentum,
with the connivance of the "liberal" press that includes the Guardian itself.
mikedow:
It's like watching a farm operation with the result of a new crop of
coups. The farmer gets on his tractor to turn over last years straw, and
fertilizing the soil, and planting new GM dictators for harvest.
nemossister
A few weeks ago this article told us how Saudi Arabia plans to fund the
rebel Free Syria Army:
So, who has been funding them since the uprising began on March 15, 2011?
Through which channels have they been acquiring and purchasing military
hardware and ammunition? I can't seem to find any decent sources for this
information... can anyone here help?
snickid
One of the most widely quoted western experts on Syria – and an
enthusiast for western intervention – Michael Weiss echoes Ambassador
Ross when he says: "Military intervention in Syria isn't so much a matter
of preference as an inevitability.” […]But Weiss is not only a blogger.
He's also the director of communications and public relations at the
Henry Jackson Society, an ultra-ultra-hawkish foreign policy thinktank.
The Henry Jackson Society also has close links with extreme pro-Zionist
groups, such as Just Journalism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Journalism
Someone should tell these people to b*gger off. With their hidden (but
not very hidden) agendas they do significant harm to pro-democracy movements
in the Arab world.
prebender
I see the penny has finally dropped. The Guardian is now beginning to
ask the questions the lazy media should have asked before the carnage in
Libya ensued. The scary part of all this is that some of the so-called freedom
fighters who are being supported by the very same western govts itching
to remove Assad in Syria are viewed as terrorists in Afghanistan.
Ocoonassa
Response to georgeat4, 12 July 2012 6:22PM
Because their editorial policy usually closely mirrors the desire of the
Foreign Office and British geopolitical interests. In recent times the Syrian
"opposition" has been quoted relentlessly and without question no matter
how spurious the claims being made.
bongoid
This is corporate fascism, these coups are all about new markets and new
resources, profit for the connected. They have infiltrated or usurped politics
and manipulate geopolitics to achieve their own financial goals. This is
truly insidious and evil.
Anotherevertonian
At last, some real journalism in The Grauniad. More, please, preferably
like this: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31791.htm Manufactured
Realities The Truth About The Arab Spring, Occupy Movement And Anonymous
By Bill Noxid
The sofa samurai and ivory-tower warriors are in full war cry over Syria.
Washington should do something! It’s time to recreate the Lincoln Brigade
so they can go to war without dragging America into yet another unnecessary
conflict.
When the conventional wisdom takes over in Washington, the crescendo can
swell to epic proportions. So it has over Syria.
For instance, the so-called Three Amigos—senators
John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joseph Lieberman, who have rarely found a country
they didn’t want to bomb or invade—naturally wanted war early and often in Syria.
Rising Republican star Senator Marco Rubio recently complained that the Obama
administration’s demand that Assad go “has not been coupled with action.”
At the other side of the political spectrum, Washington Post columnist
Richard Cohen fulminated over America’s failure to act. New York Times
columnist Nicholas Kristof expressed shock that a Nobel Peace Prize winner had
not involved America in another war. Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution
argued that pundits should concentrate on advocating war, not worrying about
the details: “I’m pretty sure it’s not the job of civilian think tanks to prepare
a full, detailed battle plan for Syria.”
Absent from this advocacy is any belief that practicality matters, that prudence
should influence policy, that going to war should be based on something more
than feelings. Who cares about the consequences of war? Just do it!
We went through a similar exercise less than a decade ago. In the run-up
to the Iraq war, opposition was drowned out with a similar crescendo of outraged
claims of imminent threats draped with humanitarian rhetoric. Opponents of war
were accused of being pro-Saddam Hussein. Armchair generals promised a “cakewalk”
that would drain the swamp, create a model democracy, extend U.S. influence
and cause the lion to lie down with the lamb.
When reality intruded after the invasion, the American
people felt duped and turned against a campaign they originally supported. In
Syria, there is no public support for intervention to start with. Disappointment
likely would begin immediately.
War advocates don’t argue that this time would be different. They act as
if Iraq didn’t happen. There’s no danger of repeating history because there
apparently is no history.
If experience won’t limit their enthusiasm for war,
we need another way to channel their enthusiasm. Instead of letting them start
another foolish, counterproductive conflict—with a potentially lengthy, costly
and counterproductive occupation to follow—we should let them go directly to
war themselves. We need a new Lincoln Brigade.
The Lincoln Brigade (actually a battalion) was part
of the international forces that fought for the Republican government against
Francisco Franco’s Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. Formed in 1937,
the Lincoln Brigade later joined with the Washington Brigade. Some 2,800 Americans
served in the two units, seven hundred of whom died either in combat or of disease
before the foreign fighters were withdrawn in late 1938.
Members of the Lincoln Brigade viewed themselves as idealistic. Their courage
was undeniable, as was their willingness to live what they preached. They believed
in foreign intervention and they intervened—personally. No advocating grand
crusades, ignoring the necessary planning and leaving the dirty work to others.
This was hands-on foreign policy at its finest.
Such an approach would be particularly welcome today
since so many zealous enthusiasts for war haven’t served in the active military.
Nor have the leaders who took America into war.
President Bill Clinton famously avoided the draft
while attempting to preserve his “political viability.” President George W.
Bush joined the reserves when it was a favored vehicle for avoiding service
in Vietnam. Vice President Richard Cheney famously explained that he had “other
priorities” in using five deferments to stay out of the Vietnam War military.
President Barack Obama never got close to a military uniform or base until he
was president. All have more often deployed the military and started more wars
than President Ronald Reagan, who was painted as a rabid cowboy during the 1980
campaign.
If “Lincoln Brigade” seems a bit dated or esoteric for the name, one could
call it the “Second Chance Brigade,” for those who just didn’t get around to
serving in the military when they were young. Or even the “Cheney Brigade,”
for everyone who was just too busy when they were in their twenties.
This doesn’t mean military service should be the primary criterion for election
to high political office. America is a republic in which the military serves
the civilian society. The highest ideal is peace, not war. And at a time in
which only a small percentage of people thankfully need don a uniform, the vast
majority of political leaders will not have done so. Nor does this mean that
those who have not served should not comment on international affairs. We all
have a stake in our nation’s defense, whether we served in the military, were
military brats (like me) or had no connection to the armed forces.
However, those who believe the military should be a tool of social engineering,
that American lives should be risked to conduct foreign crusades without any
vital or even merely serious U.S. security interests at stake, have a special
responsibility to the country. The warrior wannabes have little credibility
if they do not put their principles into action.
Drezner says that recently retired military officers are in a “slightly different
category” from those still on active duty. “Slightly”? They are in a completely
different category. There is none of the same restriction about contradicting
or being insubordinate to the boss in government. We are talking about private
citizens expressing views about public affairs. We should not make the mistake
of assuming that because such a citizen once was in the military, the views
being expressed are somehow views “of the military,” much less militaristic.
Walt correctly notes that it was Dwight Eisenhower who warned us about a military-industrial
complex and that on Iran our military leaders “seem a lot more sensible than
the more hawkish civilians.” Those examples reflect a larger pattern.
Research
has demonstratedthat U.S. military veterans
as well as serving officers are more reluctant to resort to force than are their
civilian countrymen who have never served in the military. I
certainly share Walt's concern about the tendency to think narrowly of the pursuit
of U.S. interests abroad in terms of the use of military force. But that unfortunate
tendency is not coming disproportionately from the views of those who have worn
the uniform.
Beyond the naval shipyard in south-east Washington lies Fort McNair, America’s
third-oldest continuous fort, which looks across the Potomac at the Ronald Reagan
national airport. Sacked by the British in the war of 1812, the fort is today
better known as the home of the National Defense University (NDU) – the descendant
of the Army Industrial College that was set up in 1924 to prevent a recurrence
of the procurement difficulties that had blighted the US military during the
First World War. It was also supposed to act as a kind of internal think tank
for the military.
NDU was the place where promising officers were sent to prepare their minds
for leadership. Dwight Eisenhower, after whom its main redbrick building is
named, graduated from here. By focusing on the resources needed to sustain the
US military, these mid-career officers think differently to others: they grasp
the importance of a robust economy. “Without it, we are nothing,” says Alpha,
a thoughtful air force colonel, who, as is the custom, is known by his military
nickname (a name I have changed to protect his identity).
“People forget that America’s military strength
is because of our power. It didn’t cause it.”
I got to know Alpha in peculiar circumstances. Unusually for a foreigner,
particularly one whose forebears once trashed the place, I was invited by the
NDU to judge the school’s annual exercise in national strategising. Along with
two other “distinguished visitors” – a label that has never before, and is unlikely
again, to be bestowed on me – I was invited to assess a ten-year national security
plan for the US that the students had spent the previous two weeks thrashing
out. The campus also conducts hi-tech war simulations in which outsiders with
military or diplomatic expertise are invited to participate.
This was an exercise in much fuzzier geopolitics. In short, what should America
do over the next decade to sustain its global pre-eminence? I was intrigued
to hear what these soldiers thought. Would they focus on defeating al-Qaeda,
pacifying Afghanistan and disarming Iran? Or would they concentrate more on
containing China as the emerging challenger to American power?
As the saying goes, give a man a hammer and all
he sees are nails. These people (I reminded myself) are the product of by far
the most powerful military machine the world has ever known. Which nails were
they seeing?
In what will qualify as another first and last, when I entered the room all
its occupants stood and then, even more excruciatingly, sought my permission
to sit down again. I momentarily thought about making a run for it. Instead
we made our introductions. Of the 16 members of the group, nine were in uniform
and the remainder were mostly senior civilian officials from the Pentagon, the
department of homeland security and the state department. To judge from their
accents, at least half of them were from the south. Most had done combat duty
in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I think you could still describe the US military as
a bastion of Republicanism,” Alpha told me a few days later. “But it’s a different
kind to what’s in fashion nowadays.”
Over the following three hours, this heavily be-medalled group laid out its
blueprint. For the most part it was a highly articulate presentation. The only
small exception was a tendency to stray into military jargon. Terms such as
“off-ramp”, “kinetic” and “situational awareness” kept recurring. It reminded
me of an American colleague at the Financial Times who, on his return from a
briefing at the Pentagon was asked what he had picked up. “I learned that situational
awareness is a force multiplier,” he said. “Which means if you know where you
are, you don’t need so many people.” When I related this to Alpha he smiled.
“We could have done with some more situational awareness when we went into Iraq,”
he said.
The group’s premise was that the US still had enough
power to help shape the kind of world it wanted to see.
By 2021 that moment would have passed. The country
needed to act very fast and very pragmatically. “The window on America’s hegemony
is closing,” said the officer selected to provide the briefing. “We are at
a point right now where we still have choices. A decade from now, we won’t.”
The US, he continued, was way too dependent on its military.
The country should sharply reduce its “global footprint” by winding up all wars,
notably in Afghanistan, and by closing peacetime military bases in Germany,
South Korea, the UK and elsewhere.
It should not to go to war with Iran. “We have to be able to learn to live
with a nuclear-armed Iran,” the briefer said. “The alternative [war] would
impose far too high a cost on America.” In Asia, the US should recognise the
inevitable and offer the green light to China’s military domination of the Taiwan
Straits. In exchange for the US agreeing to stand down over Taiwan, China would
push North Korea to unite with South Korea. Finally, the US should stop spending
so much time and resources on the war against al-Qaeda (the exercise took place
about three weeks before Osama Bin Laden was killed).
All this was a means to an end, which was to restore the US’s economic vitality.
It would not be easy. It may not even be possible, they conceded. But it should
be the priority. “The number one threat facing America
is its rising debt burden,” said the briefing officer. “Our number
one goal should be to restore American prosperity.” Intrigued by the boldness
of their vision, I was unprepared for what followed.
The briefer said they had all agreed on the need to shrink the Pentagon
budget by at least a fifth, partly by closing overseas bases, partly by reducing
the number of those in uniform by 100,000, but also by cutting the number of
“battle groups” – aircraft carriers – below its current level of 11.
Most of the savings would be spent on civilian priorities such as infrastructure,
education and foreign aid. None of this would be possible were the US at war,
or even under threat of war, they said. It could be pulled off only if the country
were, in effect, to cede – or “share” – its domination over large parts of the
world. “We would need to persuade our friends on the Republican side that America
has to share power if we want to free up resources to invest at home,” the briefer
said. “We tried really hard to come up with alternatives. But we couldn’t find
a better way to do this.”
Led by my two “co-judges”, we probed the 15 men and one woman for signs of
hesitation. Expecting some kind of a reaction, I suggested that their plan would
be seen as dangerous. Pull out of Europe? Accept nuclear parity with China?
Embark on a Marshall-style plan to revive the US economy? The chances of anything
like this happening were zero. “Nobody here thinks
the politics in this town is going to change overnight,” said an army colonel
from Tennessee with a classic military buzz cut. “All we are saying is that
we’re in trouble if they don’t.” I heard his words and saw the
person from whom they were issued. It was still a struggle to match them up.
Later it occurred to me that what the group had laid out was within the mainstream
of Republican tradition. In the 1860s, Abraham Lincoln unleashed a series of
investments that were to unify the continent into one national economy – from
the railroads to the public universities. In the early 1900s, Teddy Roosevelt,
another Republican, broke up the oil monopolies, introduced regulation of workplace
conditions and set up the first national parks to preserve the wilderness. Dwight
Eisenhower, their fellow alumnus, responded to the Soviet launch of Sputnik
in 1957 with massive investments in public education, science and road-building.
In a classic of unintended consequences, he also created the research agency
that went on to develop the internet.
Even Ronald Reagan, the undisputed icon of today’s conservative movement,
shepherded through an amnesty for illegal immigrants, closed down thousands
of income-tax loopholes and set up a public-private partnership to defend the
US’s embattled computer chipindustry. Reagan once said: “I didn’t leave the
Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.” Given the Republican Party’s instinct to equate virtually any taxes with
socialism nowadays, it looks like Lincoln’s party has left the US military –
or at least its upper reaches.
Even with my grasp of polling methodology, I knew a group of 16 officers
was too small a sample from which to draw any big conclusions. So it was with
particular interest, a few weeks after the session, that I came across an article
in Foreign Policy on a report issued by the Pentagon, by the mysterious “Y”,
entitled “A National Strategic Narrative”. The report made much the same arguments.
It paid homage to the famous “long telegram” from Moscow by George Kennan, published
under the byline “X” in Foreign Affairs in 1947, which argued for a strategy
of “containment” of the Soviet Union. In an attempt to get more attention, Admiral
Mike Mullen, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and therefore the head
of all the US armed services, agreed to allow the names of the two “Y” authors
to be revealed. These were Captain Wayne Porter of the US Navy and Colonel Mark
“Puck” Mykleby of the US Marine Corps. Both were on loan to Admiral Mullen’s
office when they wrote it.
The authors argued that the US could not hope
to practise “smart power” abroad if it did not practise “smart growth” at home.
Unlike Kennan’s intervention, the article written by “Y” generated little response.
Barring a few bloggers, none of the major newspapers or television stations
saw it as newsworthy. Kennan had been compelled to reveal that he was “X” after
a mounting campaign of public speculation. The authors of “Y” elicited barely
a shrug when they volunteered their identities. Yet their piece offered a key
insight into the troubled mindset of the US senior military.
Much like the NDU group, Porter and Mykleby argued for a new spirit of “shared
sacrifice” in America. It was Alpha who gave force to that phrase for me. Having
patrolled the skies of Iraq – acting as the “unblinking eye” of the army – Alpha,
like many of his colleagues, was disappointed with how the civilians managed
that war. “In this country ‘shared sacrifice’ means
putting a yellow ribbon around the oak tree and then going shopping,” he said, in reference to George W Bush’s infamous call for Americans
to hit the ski slopes and the shopping malls after the 11 September 2001 attacks.
The memory still bothered him. “Taxes are the price
we pay for civilisation,” he said, in quotation of the jurist, Oliver Wendell
Holmes.
America’s ability to reverse her fortunes could come about only through being
admired around the world, rather than feared, Alpha said. There was a thin line
between being feared and being mocked. “Should we be seen as a hegemon that
imposes its will on others, or as a beacon?” he said when I asked whether the
US should regain its appetite to promote democracy overseas. “The best thing
we can do for democracy around the world is to change our act here at home.”
Alpha’s group had recommended lifting the foreign aid budget by $30bn a year,
entirely at the expense of the Pentagon. “We know there’s no lobby in Washington
for foreign aid,” he said. In a poll by World Public Opinion a few months earlier,
the American public estimated that a quarter of the US federal budget was spent
on foreign aid. In fact, Washington spends little more than a dollar on aid
for every 99 dollars it spends on something else. The gap between perception
and reality is occasionally stunning. In practice, and given the patchy record
of the aid industry around the world, it is unlikely more money would buy the
kind of goodwill that Alpha’s group would expect for the US – development is
a complicated business. But that seemed beside the point. What I took from Alpha
and his colleagues was a visceral concern about America’s future.
I picked up the same concern from Admiral Mullen in an interview that he
gave me three months before retiring as head of the US military. Mullen was
in a talkative mood. In 2010, in the midst of overseeing a 30,000 troop surge
to Afghanistan, Mullen had vented alarm about growing US national debt, declaring
that it was the country’s biggest threat – greater
than that posed by terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and global warming.
He had since repeated his point. We met amid the rolling high drama that led
up to the last-minute decision in August 2011 to raise the US national debt
limit by more than $2trn.
Perched at his utilitarian semi-circular desk, with a bank of television
screens behind him, the admiral munched happily through two hot dogs, both of
which he had drowned in mustard. It did not slow his word rate. “We are borrowing
money from China to build weapons to face down China,” he said. “I mean, that’s
a broken strategy. It may be OK now for a while, but it is a failed strategy
from a national security perspective.”
Mullen spoke of the need for Washington to take more effective decisions
at a time when the US is entering a lengthy phase of fiscal austerity. It was
clear he did not think Washington was up to the task. It still hadn’t made a
proper account about the events that led up to the September 2008 meltdown in
the days that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Nor was there strong
reason to be confident that such a meltdown would not recur. “Where were the
overseers, as opposed to the finger pointers, which is what they became?” he
asked. “Where was the oversight – the helpful, regulatory, legislative oversight
to keep us in limits? Because it wasn’t there. It wasn’t there. Where the hell
is the accountability for this?”
Mullen’s concerns reminded me of Eisenhower’s famous address in 1961, just
before John F Kennedy was inaugurated as president, in which he warned of the
dangers posed by the US’s emerging “military-industrial complex”. The world
has turned at least half circle since then. Nowadays, those in Mullen’s position
spend more time worrying about the foreign components that go into US military
equipment. The global supply chain is a growing reality for the Pentagon. In
such a hyper-integrated world, very little is made purely in America.
The world is changing rapidly, Mullen continued, and the US cannot be expected
to do all the heavy lifting. Much of its industrial base, including the naval
shipyards and certain kinds of missile-building systems, was now in a “critically
fragile” state, he said. “Once you lose that capacity, it’s hard to get back.
We’re going to have to have something like a global security strategy that involves
our allies and our alliances, so that our industrial capacities are complementary.”
In short, America’s allies should share much more of the economic burden. “There
is not a country in the world that can do this alone any more,” Mullen told
me.
A few weeks after the NDU course finished, Alpha went back to Afghanistan
to a war in which he believes the US has again set its heights too high. “We
should be more modest in what we think we can achieve,” he said. “The American
military was never supposed to be an aid agency.” For Alpha, as for Mullen,
American recent history offers a lesson in overreach. The US military has been
asked to pull off the impossible in far away places. But whatever it has learned
only reinforces its scepticism about what it can achieve. The real challenges
are at home.
It is a mindset increasingly shared by the American people, more than seven
out of ten of whom tell Gallup they believe their children will be worse off
than they are – a strikingly un-American pessimism. Yet it is deeply rooted:
a large chunk of the middle class is worse off, or the same, in real terms as
their parents. Their contempt for Washington, which
seems unable to grapple with the structural challenges facing US competitiveness,
keeps growing, whoever is in office. Last year, just 9 per cent
said they believed Congress was doing the right thing all or some of the time,
which pretty much confined it to “blood relatives and paid staffers”, as the
joke goes.
And while Washington prevaricates, the rest of the world keeps expanding
its share. In 2000, the US had 31 per cent of world income, according to the
IMF. That is now down to 23 per cent, heading towards 17 per cent in the next
decade. Yet even Barack Obama, whom Mitt Romney likes to portray as the declinist-in-chief,
says, “anyone who says America is in decline doesn’t know what they’re talking
about”. To tackle a problem you must first recognise
that it exists. That is what they are taught in officer school. For the most
part, the US’s problems are not obscure. But the will to confront them appears
to be missing in action.
For Alpha, the best illustration of Washington’s falling IQ – among a rich
embarrassment of choices – is its reluctance to address the festering morass
in the American immigration system. As a nation of immigrants, America is supposed
to attract people. “We take the world’s smartest kids and we give them the best
education available, and then we put them on a plane back home,” he said. “How
smart is that?”
Edward Luce is the author of “Time to Start
Thinking: America and the Spectre of Decline” (Little, Brown, £20
Nevertheless, I still am going to say just a fact: the United States military-industrial
complex has earned billions and billions of dollars as a result of 9/11. I think
it would have been much more difficult to achieve those sums of money without
9/11. The US military expenditures are already equal in size of all of the rest
combined. 9/11 surely helped that ideological support for such an incredibly
large military.
LS: Do you think from an economist's point of view it has become
reality what president [Dwight] Eisenhower warned about, that the military-industrial
complex has become too large and too powerful, and is now calling the shots
economically? [8]
PZ: The short answer is yes, but the more complicated answer
is that my understanding of Eisenhower's statement is that it was long in preparation,
it was kind of a year in the making. But, on the other hand, I mean, you can
ask yourself the question: Well, why didn't he do it two years earlier than
that? It was kind of something he threw out at the last minute and didn't have
to take any responsibility for.
At the same time he was setting up the Bay of Pigs invasion [in Cuba] that
he foisted on [president J F] Kennedy. So, yes, it's a great thing to quote
what Eisenhower said; I like it and it turns out to be correct, but I don't
fully understand his motivation when he waited to the last minute to say it
and then afterwards couldn't do anything about it, and what he did do as president
was consistent with the rest of the US foreign policy.
LS: Well, his successor John F Kennedy was dealing with the
military-industrial complex a bit differently.
PZ: Yes, he was the one who really challenged it. There is
a wonderful book on this that should be read by anybody: JFK and the Unspeakable
by Jim Douglas. [9]
LS: Yes, it is just brilliant, I agree.
PZ: If people want to read something about JFK's challenge
of the military-industrial complex this is definitely the book to read, no doubt
about it.
LS: Thank you very much for taking your time, Professor Zarembka!
Notes
1. Paul Zarembka:, "Evidence of Insider Trading before September 11th Re-examined",
International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001, September 8-11,
2011, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, online
here, September
9, 2011.
2. Allen M Poteshman: "Unusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks
of September 11, 2001," published in The Journal of Business, University of
Chicago Press, 2006, Vol. 79, Edition 4, page 1703-1726.
3. Wing-Keung Wong, Howard E. Thompson und Kweehong Teh: "Was there Abnormal
Trading in the S&P 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacks", Multinational
Finance Journal, Vol. 15, no. 1/2, pp. 1- 46 online
here.
4. Marc Chesney, Remo Crameri and Loriano Mancini: "Detecting Informed Trading
Activities in the Option Markets", University of Zurich, April 2010, online
here.
5. See Michael C Ruppert: "Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American
Empire at the End of the Age Of Oil", New Society Publishers, 2004.
6. See Commission Memorandum: "FBI Briefing on Trading", dated August 18, 2003,
online here.
7. Bill Bergman: "A 9/11 Paper Trail: Benjamin Franklin, Rolling Over In His
Grave", published March 23, 2012, see
here.
8. See Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Farewell Address", delivered 17 January 1961,
online
here.
9. James Douglass: "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters",
Orbis Books, 2008.
Apparently the thing we need to keep ourselves safe is a fast, lightweight
ship that can sweep mines, launch helicopters, fight submarines, and perform
other assorted duties—but can’t withstand heavy combat. I don’t claim to know
if we really need the Littoral Combat Ship to ensure our national security.
According to an article in the
Times, John McCain—the Republican Party’s last presidential nominees
and one of the Navy’s more famous veterans—is critical, although other Republicans
and the administration are in favor of it.
I do know that the Littoral Combat Ship is a classic example of why it’s
so hard to reduce budget deficits. You have local politicians who want the jobs.
You have a large group of representatives who are reflexively pro-military and
will vote for anything the Pentagon wants, and even things the Pentagon doesn’t
want. (You have Mitt Romney, who bemoans the fact that the Navy has only 285
ships, the fewest since 1917. Would he rather have the Royal Navy of 1812, which
had 1,000 ships, or our navy, with eleven aircraft carrier groups—while no other
country has more than one?) You have a procurement and development process that
stretches on for years so that even when a weapons system turns out to be a
dud, it has to be kept alive because it’s too big to fail—there is no other
alternative. Both the Center for American Progress and the Project on Governmental
Oversight have
recommended cutbacks in the Littoral program. Yet there is no practical
way to check its momentum.
An even better example is the V-22 Osprey vertical-takeoff plane, which the
Times profiled late last year. Even renowned insider Dick Cheney opposed
the Osprey when he was secretary of defense, to no avail. Not only CAP and the
Project on Governmental Oversight called for Osprey cutbacks, but so did Simpson-Bowles
and the arch-conservative (and generally principled) Senator Tom Coburn. In
short, just about anyone who cares about the budget wants to cut back on the
Osprey. Will it happen? Well, the Paul Ryan budget reverses the automatic defense
spending cuts, so we know what he thinks about it. And I’m sure the Osprey has
plenty of fans in the administration and the Democratic caucus as well.
In the end, defense spending plays out the same way as Social Security. If
you want to reduce government spending, you obviously have to reduce defense
spending: it’s basically the second biggest part of the budget after Social
Security. But it’s almost impossible to cut any actual defense spending. Apparently
politicians don’t realize that a whole is equal to the sum of its parts. Or
they do realize it, and they hope that we don’t.
One of our core political problems, as we discuss in
White House Burning,
is that it pays for politicians to take noisy stands against the whole while
protecting (or increasing) each individual part. It seems so easy to get away
with it—why would they ever stop?
Mr Kwak has discovered the Military-Industrial Complex!
I recently learned that Eisenhower, who I am old enough
to remember, originally thought to call it the Military-Industrial-
Congressional Complex; maybe this name should be revived.
But there are still gaps in Mr Kwak’s learning. Does he
know that Social Security is not part of the Budget? Does
he know that Social Security pays for itself? Let’s
please keep Social Security out of considerations about
what to do about our present Crisis.
That we have a Crisis is beyond doubt. Yeats had it
at least half right, for the Worst are indeed Full of
Passionate Intensity. I don’t know where the Best
are, but the Educated shouldn’t I think simply shrug
their shoulders.
Best wishes,
Alan McConnell, in Silver Spring MD
edward ericson
Military spending since at least WWII has worked economically like an
impossibly poorly-conceived “economic stimulus.” It’s all about the first-order
defense contracting jobs, which pay well and seem stable. The fact that
the products made have, in most cases, no productive use (see, for example,
the Trident Submarine. If we use it for its intended function human life
ceases) but the costs trickle into hundreds of needy local economies. Localities
where workers hate “welfare” and those who live off it….
Can’t cut it? That’s been known.
Why not we start by calling it what it is: Military Keynesianism*
*and yeah, Keynes was not for it.
common sense
is it just me, or is “a way to defend yourself” the last thing you want
to cut when you’re facing cashflow issues paying your creditors????
Moses Herzog
The point Mr. Kwak makes above is a crucial one, and has been made by
many others (Rachel Maddow makes this point pretty strongly in her book
I “believe”, although to be honest I haven’t read Maddow’s book yet). Innumerable
Republicans have been busted on this, and it basically goes back to “earmarks”
and “earmarked” bills. The legislator says “no” to any individual bill until
he gets his individual “pork barrel” project which goes to his state. He
either wants to maintain jobs or add jobs, no matter how useless the jobs
are to the overall defense of the country. A lot of times you hear about
“Legacy” technologies or “Legacy” defense programs that Senators insist
on continuing for their state or their district
even though the Senator/legislator knows and is fully aware
those defense systems/programs are useless for modern warfare. And they
would insist those same defense programs are garbage or “pork”
if located in another legislator’s voting district.
But here is the problem with Pres. Obama: First he says “we’re gonna
have hope and change”. And what is one of the first things he does out of
the starting gate?? Pres. Obama chooses a known TAXCHEAT, because
Pres. Obama knows he’s thick as thieves with the boys at Citigroup and NYFRB
(and a Robert Rubin crony). Then Pres. Obama says I’m not gonna take “special
interest money” which Pres Obama knew was a damned lie from the moment
it left his lips, and knew he would never follow through on,
and had no intention of following through on.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-convention-money-20120406,0,4886623.story
Then we see Pres. Obama signs in the last couple days the “JOBS act”
which is nothing of the kind, and Pres Obama knows it is nothing
of the kind, but thinks that we (the electorate) are all so damned dumb
that we are going to piss ourselves when we see him signing a law that has
“jobs” in the title.
This is why those persons (including myself, the IDIOT that I was) who
were so emotional (I am now ashamed to say I got swept up with emotion)
when they saw an intelligent black man walk out on the stage in Chicago
are severely disappointed now, and are going to have to drag their
feet to the voting booth (I don’t think I’m gonna do it now). Because
THIS IS NOT HOPE AND CHANGE.. These are the same bullsh*t lies
we’ve been told time and time again. And LIES don’t sound any sweeter coming
from a black President, than they do from old white Republican bast*rds.
Maybe the lies are even worse, because that black man should know better.
bayardwaterbury
James, although I am sure that you have read it, I would strongly recoommend
to you and your readers that you read “Washington Rules” by Andrew Bacevich.
It is the best I have read on how the military industrial complex has continuously
and cleverly morphed itself to stay on top of the US agenda ever since WWII.
It is an amazing expose, brilliantly written and supported. The MIC is simply
a behemoth of epic power that is unlikely to be tamed anytime soon. There
have been opportunities in the past, especially since the disasterous adventure
in South Vietnam, its massive unpopularity. However, just as example of
how the MIC stayed on top after that is how they abandoned the draft quickly
to assure that the only “painful” part of their existence was the cost,
and we know the story of budgets and public apathy. Certainly, both Iraq
and Afghanistan serve to testify to the power of this oligarchy. I have
serious doubts that, until our economy totally collapses, nothing can possibly
be done to change its overwhelming momentum and tame it.
Woop
The entire gestalt disfavors substantial cuts in military spending.
This is true since USA won WW 2. Ike saw the peril, and made a special
point of hammering it in his Farewell Address in 1961. Things have grown
exponentially more entangled since that address.
When you raison d’etre as a nation is so intimately tied to war and war
fighting, what follows is the insatiable lust of more military hardware
and software.
If there isn’t an enemy, then, by geezus, we’ll need to invent one, whether
it’s a yellow man in a rice paddy, or some bearded, exotic-looking foreigner
who gets fingered for the part.
In any event, the gig has run its’ course. The US Navy could reduce to
4 carrier battle groups and still be the most formidable sea-going Navy
on the seas.
Anyway, war brings TONS of promotions for the officer corp, with that
comes meatier pensions, and chances of swinging into a corporate cushion
on the way out.
And they won’t reduce voluntarily…..I call everyone’s attention to the
period after the dissolution of the USSR and the next big thing, which,
of course. we all know about.
No, Social Security is nothing like the Defense Department problem. Allan
McConnell pointed out some of the differences, but he missed the most important
one. The Social Security “problem” could be solved in an instant by removing
the earnings cap. Make any assumptions you want and do any math you like.
It always comes out the same. No more Social Security problem forever!!
That is clearly not the case with Defense spending.
Annie
What is the first thing that everyone says about the Middle East?
“….there’s never going to be peace there…”
Tada! Perpetual war…throw in *prophecy* and you’re good to go…
Old enough now to see the pattern – every 15 years, crank up unemployment
and go get everybody’s last egg laying chicken – just takes a year or two…but
this heist is a whopper, no? I mean 7 trillion?!!! Crazy. There’s seriously
no country left! If we had bar codes on the paper bills, we’d see the map
light up where that paper is….
Seven billion people – ENDLESS slave labor supply – no need for worrying
about labor costs ever again, either.
Some religionists were arguing about how evil the Urantia Book is because
it sez that God made no place such as Hell. Hell is a monkey brain’s creative
imaginative thinking and we certainly have turned Spaceship Earth into hell.
But that’s not as *evil* as a book that says that there is no *hell*. Get
it? Creating hell is not as evil as saying that God never created such a
thing as hell…moral high ground is the *authority* of the hell makers…
"But the reason I called it the “media military industrial complex,” and one
of the sort of insights that I have had is that they call it the Pentagon Press
Corps, right? And you sort of think, oh, well it means the people who kind of watch
over the Pentagon and perform the media's watchdog function, but no, it's an extension
of the Pentagon. For the most part."
January 25, 2012 | Alternet
Hastings, in his hard-hitting new book, discusses "politically correct
imperialism," why the military is obsessed with its legacy, and why we're stuck
in post-9/11 thinking.
Robert Greenwald: Let me congratulate you on this book, it's an absolutely
wonderful read. I felt like I was reading some combination of a detective story,
a movie screenplay and Orson Welles all at the same time.
Michael Hastings: Thank you so much.
RG: One of the ideas that you talk about is that the “terrorist safe
haven” is the “weapons of mass destruction” of the Afghanistan war. Why don't
you explain how you came to that realization and why it's important.
MH: Well, I call it the "safe haven myth."
And what that means is that this idea that the best way to protect ourselves
from getting attacked in the United States by terrorists is to invade and occupy
other countries – that's essentially what they mean when they say we can't accept
terrorist safe havens. And the response to the safe havens has been to expend
billions of dollars and tens of thousands of American troops to try to prevent
something that is quite nebulous.
I mean, it's very clear a terrorist safe haven
can be anywhere, and they are everywhere. So the notion that the best way to
defeat them or to make yourself safer from a terrorist is by occupying countries
always struck me as funny. How are 150,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan
going to protect us from another terrorist attack? And the answer is they're
not. That hasn't happened because all the other terrorist attacks we've seen,
and attempted terrorist attacks, they're not coming from Afghanistan. The terrorists
have moved.
Whether they're coming from Nigeria and Yemen or different parts of Pakistan
or Connecticut, you know? The Times Square bomber, the foiled plot there, was
hatched in Connecticut – is it a terrorist safe haven as well? No. And it gets
to the larger point, which is that if you considered terrorism a law enforcement
problem you were considered to be some sort of appeasing Neville Chamberlain
type. But in fact, that's the way to defeat terrorists.
I mean, every study shows that the way to defeat terrorist networks is through
law enforcement and intelligence gathering, it's not through invading and occupying.
RG: Yeah, I've read a lot of those studies and it couldn't be clearer
that there are ways to get terrorists, and the way that's guaranteed to fail
is to invade, occupy, kill lots of innocent people. So do you have a sense of
how and why this theory came into being? I mean, is it completely driven by
the politics of the Bush administration? The think tanks in DC? Some combination
thereof? Because it's so far off the mark in terms of any rational notion about
keeping us safer.
MH: I think it has to do with the original reaction to September 11. By going
into Afghanistan where, at the time, Osama bin Laden was being given safe haven
by the Taliban. It was a legitimate rationale -- "Okay, the Taliban government
is protecting this terrorist and as a response to that we are going to punish
this government for their actions."
And at that time, remember, there were warnings. In 2001 people were warning,
oh, this could be a quagmire ... and again, they were laughed off the stage.
So then, 10 years later when we were clearly in a quagmire, the military having
kind of sunk their claws into the war find themselves in a situation where they
need to justify all the tremendous outlay of resources.
And so the way they came up to justify what they were doing was to adopt
these counterinsurgency tactics. Now, this is where counterinsurgency relates
to the terrorist safe havens because General David Petraeus said, and I found
this during the research, he said counterinsurgency is the framework we should
view counterterrorism through. And that's not true, and everyone knows that's
not true. But they had to come up with a justification to continue to pursue
the policies that they wanted to pursue.
A general told me recently that the military
is risk-averse and legacy obsessed. And I think that's interesting. Especially
the legacy-obsessed part. Because once they started in Iraq, and once they sort
of started on this project in Afghanistan, it's much less risky to keep doing
what you're doing. Leaving is a risk. Staying and doing what you're doing, you
know what the outcome is going to be because you've been doing it for 10 years.
And legacy-obsessed means they don't want to have a repeat of Vietnam. They
want to be able to say -- the Pentagon wants to be able to say, General Petraeus
and General McChrystal want to be able to say that they won. And so that's why
they're going to keep doing what they're doing until they can convince everyone
that they won.
RG: Now, I underlined so many things in your book that it would take
a day to just quote them all. But one quote that stuck with me summed up the
essential flaws in the thinking, the safe haven flaw, if you will: “Marja must
be controlled in order to eventually control Kandahar. Kandahar must be controlled
to control Afghanistan. Afghanistan must be controlled to control Pakistan.
Pakistan must be controlled to prevent Saudi Arabia terrorists from getting
on a flight at J.F.K. Airport in Jamaica, Queens.”
Did that revelation all come to you at the same time? Or how were
you able to put that together and make it so crystal clear?
MH: Well, to me this was apparent in Iraq, but it's also apparent in Afghanistan:
that nothing that we're doing on a daily basis -- by "we" I mean NATO and U.S.
forces -- has anything to do with preventing another September 11. I mean, 99
percent of the people we killed over these past 10 years would never have posed
a threat to the United States. I mean, that's a devastating indictment of our
endeavors -- it's devastating.
RG: Well, when we began our work on Afghanistan, we did it at a time
when the war was incredibly popular -- it was the right war – but a cursory
look made it clear that the fundamentals made no sense. Iraq, you could argue
-- obviously we were opposed to it – but you could argue they had weapons of
mass destruction and therefore you should do something. It was a wrong but rational
argument. In Afghanistan, I cannot find rational, logical arguments for doing
what we're doing.
MH: In 2008, after my first trip to Afghanistan, I came back and did a story
for GQ, and my editor said something -- and it's a line I've stolen
from him – he said we're stuck in post-9/11 thinking.
There was this whole period of time where you could be accused of pre-9/11 thinking,
but what's happened is we're stuck in post-9/11 thinking. And these misconceptions
that I think took hold quite early have become institutionalized. And institutionalized
in a way that is meant to shut down debate.
Because you may say, well, we should get out of Afghanistan, and then the
answer is, well, what about the terrorist safe havens? Grover Norquist actually
made the argument that there's a reason why there's not a robust debate from
the other side about Afghanistan – it's because they know how flimsy their argument
is.
And we haven't even gotten to the fact that by being in these places – and
with the trauma that we're inflicting on these societies while we're there –
that's the way you create terrorists, it's not the way you defeat terrorists.
RG: Yes, well, with the exception of you and a few others we have
allowed some of these folks to get away with outrageousness under the pretense
that it's serious thinking. And I think the so-called liberal hawks have also
done us an extraordinary disservice for which they have paid no public price.
And you had a really good name for it -- "politically correct imperialism."
And I just love that.
MH: It's really amazing to see. And the sort
of liberal human-rights pro-war community, they only use these sort of human
rights issues when it's to their advantage. The great argument is we can't leave
Afghanistan because what about the Afghan women?
And the problem with that line of thinking is not that, oh, you know, I'm
not concerned with the fate of Afghan women, it's that the U.S. government and
the Pentagon is never going to be concerned with the fate of Afghan women.
And the only reason these arguments are used is to put forth these sort of plans
for constant war.
But I should rephrase that. It's not that they don't care, it's just not
a priority. And all these human rights issues that get put out there as reasons
to stay, are just, in my mind, again, it becomes a strange form of this politically
correct imperialism. If the U.S. government were actually concerned about the
fate of these native populations, then you clearly wouldn't want to invade them
and raid their houses and detain tens of thousands of their citizens. Does anyone
really think that we have any concern at all for the fate of Afghan women?
But again, that's taken as a serious argument. You know, people at the Council
on Foreign Relations will argue strenuously that's why we have to be in Afghanistan.
RG: I want to move to a Colbert quote and talk about the Pentagon
and the media. There's a great quote of his from the White House Correspondents
dinner, whenever that was, 2006: “Let's review the
rules, here's how it works. The President makes decisions, he's the decider.
The press secretary announces the decisions, and you people of the press type
these decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put them through a spell check
and go home.”
It's common knowledge about Iraq, but I think the price that we've
paid for the press being stenographers, or as you call it, the “media military
industrial complex,” is significant. And I do not think it's a question of just
sort of attacking some bad journalists, although that can be done, but I'd like
you to talk about the institutional way that Pentagon approaches this.
MH: Well, one point on Stephen Colbert's speech: it's now considered sort
of this amazing speech because it was, but at the time a lot of journalists
panned it. Oh, they hated it because it hit too close.
I mean, look, there are a lot of excellent journalists doing great, great
work. But the reason I called it the “media military
industrial complex,” and one of the sort of insights that I have had is that
they call it the Pentagon Press Corps, right? And you sort of think, oh, well
it means the people who kind of watch over the Pentagon and perform the media's
watchdog function, but no, it's an extension of the Pentagon. For the most part.
I mean, when was the last time anyone at the Pentagon broke a story that
wasn't pre-approved? It's very, very rare. And the reason why it's so difficult
-- and this gets to the information operations and the public affairs -- it's
a very difficult story to tell because you're lifting up the curtain on what
have become very common practices for journalists to do.
And I noticed this first in Iraq when things were going horribly -- this
is in 2005, 2006, 2007 when I was there. And the spokespeople in the military
public relations apparatus would just lie to your face. Every day they would
lie. It was general Caldwell who was one of the spokes people there who I would
sit next to at these briefings and he would say everything's fine, you know?
And there might have been four car bombs that morning.
And what's been scary is that these sort of information operations tactics
... most journalists consider them no big deal. And when you try to point out,
'hey, this isn't right.' you get your head chopped off.
I did a story about this information operations team trained in psychological
operations that was being asked to spin and influence visiting senators. Did
the media respond by saying, 'let's launch an investigation, let's make sure
we don't do this?' No, they responded by attacking the whistle blower and then
at the same time saying, 'oh, it's no big deal, this is fine. Of course generals
use their information operations psy-ops guys to put together material, it's
not a big deal, it's just normal public relations.'
But wait a second here. This is not just normal public relations -- there
are entire operations in the Pentagon whose goal is not just to influence the
enemy's population but in fact the more important goal is to influence the U.S.
population. And the line that used to be, or was supposed to have been the red
line between public relations and information operations, meaning one you use
on Americans and one you use on the enemy, they are tearing that firewall down.
So you have generals with public media handlers and they have these contracting
companies that are collecting data on who's tweeting what and they have different
Twitter “sock-puppets” that they've put up to try to manipulate all these different
social media.
And at some point they're essentially waging this global information war
against their own citizens. So that, to me, is the most disturbing trend of
it all. And General Petraeus at one point said the most important thing about
Iraq was information operations, information operations, information operations.
And in the context he was saying it, he meant in terms of convincing the Iraqi
people that things were going well. But the real people he was convincing were
back in Washington. That's who the target of all the spin really is.
RG: And when you said the people of Washington ... so you are talking
about the decision-makers who get impacted by this, right?
MH: Yeah. I think there's a lot of really good reporting that's come out
on the ground while you're over there. But you look at the reporting that comes
out of Washington on some of this stuff and it's bonkers, it's just so far off
base.
I haven't ever really looked at the numbers, but you count up the budget
of every major news organization in Afghanistan, and I would guess American
news organizations spend maybe 10 million a year, maybe 20 million to cover
Afghanistan. The Pentagon itself is spending 5 million just to have one information
operations unit there, and they have hundreds of them. So the actual military
in Afghanistan is putting hundreds of millions of dollars of resources into
manipulating the media. And the media is spending $10 -20million to try to find,
in theory, the truth. So it's this huge power imbalance that you're always fighting
against.
And God forbid you step outside the packet, as some journalists have done,
and point this out. Yeah, we all know they're lying but you're not supposed
to say it, you know? We know we're getting bullshit every day, but come on,
man, don't point it out -- that's not classy.
RG: Right. So I know that it's systemic, but are there individual
reporters whom you want to call out publicly for their sort of following the
Pentagon line and not doing their job?
MH: Yeah. I saw a pretty egregious example with the New York Times
Pentagon correspondent who literally just published the Pentagon spokesperson's
anonymous quotes when he was reporting on my stories. And he didn't bother to
call Rolling Stone for a comment, of course, because, well, he's got
the official line from the Pentagon.
But I would also call out a group of very influential national security reporters
who work at most of the major media outlets. And if you look closely at their
resumes, they all belong or have been paid by, or have worked for very influential
think tanks. Now again, what's the big deal? These think tanks -- Center for
New American Security is sort of the most egregious example -- are funded by
defense contractors. These think-tanks also employ a lot of retired generals.
And,, more importantly, they are promoting very specific pro-war policies.
And so they put the guys on their payroll whose job it is to cover the policies
they're promoting. And you go through the list, all of them – the New York
Times, the Washington Post -- have had their
guys on the payroll of these major influential think attention, again, funded
by defense contractors, and then we expect them to cover their friends and colleagues
very critically? They haven't.
One guy said to me, “I don't think that just the fact that they had a job
or had a stipend or had an office space at these places impacts their coverage.”
I said, “I don't know about that. They're all on the same team, you know, in
this atmosphere.” And CNAS, amazingly enough, brags about the influence it peddles.
They brag about all the big time journalists they have on their payroll and
the influence that that brings.
And you can call it soft influence peddling, but I think it's more than that.
Look, if you're a police reporter but you're working for a police officer association's
policy network which is funded by the police groups, you would be called out
for it. If you were a golf reporter and you're being paid by the PGA but writing
for a national publication, you would be called out for it.
So the fact that they haven't ... well, they have been but it just doesn't
stick because they're all complicit. I mean, that's the rub. And I understand
that it's tough to make a living as a writer, and these institutions give you
an office space, they give you time, they give you money to do more interesting
projects, but what's the price of that? The price is that you have to pull a
lot of punches. And you may not even be realizing you're doing it. But I think
they do, I think they're just playing the game.
RG: Right, the club. Moving from that to the final question I wanted
to ask you about. When you exposed what was going on with McChrystal and his
team over there, you said you learned by going out in the field not at the K
Street cocktail parties …
MH: Yeah, and that was a comment that endeared me to many of my friends in
Washington, I'm sure.
RG: I'm sure it did. But an important one because it's a very clear
dividing line, and a very clear perspective. You got quite viciously attacked.
Was it organized? Was it the club? And how did you respond to those attacks?
And have they had any lasting effect?
MH: Well, look, at first I was perplexed and thought, 'oh, these guys just
don't get what I'm doing or they're confused.' But then I realized it was a
little more pernicious than that. I'm trying to think of exactly how I should
put this. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by it. But I was.
I got a horrible review in the Wall Street Journal
which was comical in many ways because it was written by a defense contractor,
it was written by a guy who worked for General Petreaus and general Caldwell,
and they didn't disclose that.
But this reviewer says, you know, 'Hastings is a fuck up because he follows
in the tradition of Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, and not reporters who work
for the New Yorker or The New York Times.' And why that was interesting
to me was because, I agree, I totally agree with that analysis, but it's because
Neil Sheehan and Dave Halberstam, their experiences were forged while they were
in their 20s in Vietnam, you know? They were young
reporters covering this stuff. So they saw the war not working first-hand. And
that had a very profound impact on how they viewed everything.
And there's a number of journalists, of my contemporaries, who I would name
but I don't want to get them in trouble, who also have seen these sort of same
sort of things unravel in our 20s. And that's the most formative kind of experience
for us. Now on the other hand, you have these kind of liberal hawks guys who
their first big war was Iraq, and they were dead wrong about it, you know? They're
these foreign policy experts who were just dead wrong.
And so how do you deal with that? How do you come to terms with that? And
my answer to that would be I don't think they came to terms with it well. As
you see when they lash out.
And you can't ever forget the impact of the complete failure of many of the
top names in the media when it comes to the Iraq war. And we've never come to
terms with it. They just can't. The guys who were the worst offenders cannot
come to terms with their moral responsibility in terms of waging the war in
Iraq. And in fact, again, you see them making statements today like, 'oh, well
I didn't really support that,' or 'I was ambivalent,' or 'well, I didn't publicly
support it.' And you think they would have learned with Afghanistan to question
more and to not just cheerlead the whole thing.
The fact that every journalist in the Pentagon
Press Corps wasn't standing up when they were going to escalate in Afghanistan
and saying, 'are you guys fucking kidding me? We're going to escalate in Afghanistan?
Are you guys nuts? Have you all gone mad?' But the majority just reported that
some unnamed military official says McCrystal wants more troops, and Obama better
give them to him. You know? It was pathetic. It was really, really pathetic.
RG: Which was worse: the reporting on Iraq or the reporting on Afghanistan?
MH: I don't know. I trash the media but in many ways you can actually be
quite well informed if you read The New York Times and the Washington
Post and all these places – again, I want to make the distinction between
the reporting out in the field and the reporting that happens in Washington
... you can get a pretty good sense of what's going on, you know, from reporters
in the field.
But unfortunately, in this warped Beltway view
of the world, what happens on the ground matters much less than what happens
in Washington. I mean, the great catalyst -- and this I write
about extensively in the book – the great catalyst for the Afghanistan debate
was not what was happening in Afghanistan, it was the fact that Bob Woodward
published a report in Washington. It was the leak. That was the great catalyst
of the Afghanistan debate in the first year of President Obama's administration.
Which is really incredible because it's not like Afghanistan was that much
worse than it was six months or a year or two years earlier. I mean, it was
a little bit worse but not, you know, not entirely noticeably worse. But it
was the fact that it became a political issue in Washington that actually impacted
the debate.
RG: Yes. Well, I think that's an important, and a good distinction.
And we found that in our work also -- that talking to the reporters who were
there in the war zones on the ground is like speaking a totally different language
than those who were only at the cocktail parties.
I want to thank you for the book, and the work you've done, Michael,
and encourage anybody reading this to get a copy. It's an important book, and
it's a great read. And I keep pretty well informed, but there's all kinds of
stuff that I didn't know about until I read your book.
Robert Greenwald
is the director/producer of "Rethink Afghanistan," "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's
War on Journalism," and many other films. He is a board member of the Independent
Media Institute, AlterNet's parent organization. Follow him on
Twitter and
Facebook.
[Jan 23, 2012] Why We
Fight by William Deresiewicz
A couple of months ago, I published
an article in TheNew York Times about a phenomenon I
referred to as the cult of the uniform: the ritualistic piety, mainly on the
part of those with no personal connection to the military, about the “heroes”
who “keep us safe” and the way that piety makes it harder for us to have an
honest debate about our empire, our wars, and our defense budget. I thought
I’d be hanged from a lamp post. In fact, the response was much more positive
than I expected. Sure, I got some hate mail (“sorry piece of human crap”; “pseudo-liberal
fascist asshole”; “I’m quite sure that Obama will just love your article. Did
you write it for him?”), a few brickbats from right-wing websites, and an invitation
(declined) to play the piñata on Fox and Friends.
But mostly the response was good, and much of it came from military people
themselves. One correspondent, a retired Navy captain, observed that our lionization
of the military leads the country to charge the Armed Forces with missions—nation-building,
broadly speaking—that it isn’t trained to carry out. Another, a Vietnam vet,
remarked that the support in “support the troops” is really “a mile
wide and an inch deep.” A third pointed out that “saluting the troops” is good
business and included a link to this
truly nauseating
ad. Quite a few people insisted that only a draft can bring us back to reality.
What I had the good sense (or cowardice) to refrain from saying in the original
article is that the language of heroism also distorts the reasons people enlist,
as well as the things a lot of them do in uniform. Some people do indeed join
the military for idealistic reasons. But most do it because they need a job,
or to get money for college, or to get away from the place they live. Some just
like the idea—let’s be honest about it—of hurting people. Every officer knows
that soldiers fight to protect their buddies, not to keep the country safe.
Of course, it doesn’t really matter why you joined or why you’re fighting
if you’re now exposed to mortal danger (as well as the moral danger of taking
a life). But far from everyone in uniform is. Most people in the Air Force,
as one of my respondents noted, have desk jobs. Sailors at sea are extremely
unlikely, the way our wars now go, to find themselves in peril. There’s nothing
wrong with that. What’s wrong is throwing a blanket of “heroes” over a couple
of million people and thinking that you’re honoring them by doing so.
But the hardest thing to say is this: the people who fight for us, who die
for us or have their minds or bodies shattered for us, are not keeping us safe
or “preserving our freedom.” They, and we, may certainly like to think they
are, but how many of the wars that we’ve fought in the last 50 years, major
or minor, have done that? Vietnam and Iraq are not the Revolution and the Second
World War. Mainly, we fight to preserve our empire—which means, to enrich the
people who run our empire—and to help politicians get reelected. In other words,
our servicemembers don’t fight “for us” at all. I’m not a pacifist. I believe
we need a military. But I’m sickened by the way we use it now. What I mainly
feel for our people in uniform is not veneration (or contempt), it’s pity—it’s
sadness. Such a criminal waste of life.
William Deresiewicz is an essayist and critic. His book, A Jane Austen Education:
How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really
Matter, was published in April. To read all the posts from his weekly blog,
“All Points,” click
here.
Viz the theory that newspapers having been taken over by the intelligence
services or at least heavily influenced by them is one that many people
hold (including people who have discused it with me whose identities might
surprise you) but it is not something that is widely talked about for fairly
obvious reasons or which can be easily proved. There was however an interesting
article some months ago in the Independent, which mentioned that newspaper
editors have regular meetings with the intelligence services over afternoon
tea. The article was buried in the inside pages and of course attracted
no attention but the author seemed to know what he was saying. I did wonder
what the purpose of the article was. Possibly a signal to someone? I discussed
the article at the time on the Craig Murray blog and drew the attention
of a commentator who was either a fantasist or someone from the intelligence
services (not impossible by the way) who appeared so well informed about
the matter that in the end I found him quite sinister.
Anyway the strongest indicator that of some sort of coordination of news
management takes place particularly over foreign news (eg. Russia, Libya,
Syria etc) is when newspapers simultaneously publish identical stories sometimes
using the same or very similar words and quite often making the same identical
misquotes or mistakes, However that is not conclusive. The media world is
quite small and journalists regularly exchange gossip and stories so it
is not surprising if they end up writing and saying the same things.
@Moscow Exile
One of the most bizarre articles I ever read about Russia in the Daily
Telegraph was in the 1980s which alleged that the Gagarin flight was a hoax.
That at least was written during the Cold War, Imagine my astonishment when
a few months ago at the time of the Gagarin anniversary I read another article
in the Daily Telegraph which came close to saying the same thing. As for
the story of the Black Widow, what it shows is that the Barclay brothers
who own the Daily Telegraph are followers of the teachings of William Randolph
Hearst, who instructed journalists working for his newspapers to “never
let the facts get in the way of a good story”.
General Wesley Clark ... said the aim of this plot [to "destroy the
governments in ... Iraq, ... Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran”]
was this: “They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down,
make it under our control.” He then recounted a conversation he had had ten
years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz — back in 1991 — in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official,
after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: “But one thing
we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in
the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got
about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran
[sic], Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to
challenge us.” Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz’s desires because, as
Clark put it: “the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments?
It’s not to deter conflicts?”
[I]n the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and Libya ...
with concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with
active and
escalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a
modest military deployment to
South Sudan, and the active use of drones in six —
count ‘em: six — different Muslim countries, it is worth asking whether
the neocon dream as laid out by Clark is dead or is being actively pursued and
fulfilled, albeit with means more subtle and multilateral than full-on military
invasions (it’s worth remembering that neocons specialized in dressing up their
wars in humanitarian packaging: Saddam’s rape rooms! Gassed his own people!).
As Jonathan Schwarz ... put it about the supposedly contentious national security
factions:
As far as I can tell, there’s barely any difference in goals within the
foreign policy establishment. They just disagree on the best methods to
achieve the goals. My guess is that everyone agrees we have to continue
defending the mideast from outside interference (I love that Hillary line),
and the [Democrats] just think that best path is four overt wars and three
covert actions, while the neocons want to jump straight to seven wars.
***
The neocon end as Clark reported them — regime change in those seven countries
— seems as vibrant as ever. It’s just striking to listen to Clark describe those
7 countries in which the neocons plotted to have regime change back in 2001,
and then compare that to what the U.S. Government did and continues to do since
then with regard to those precise countries.
How Private Warmongers and the US Military Infiltrated American Universities
Monday 28 November 2011 by: Steve Horn and Allen Ruff, Truthout | News Analysis
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout) This article is part 1 of a two-part
series on the military's influence on academia. Part 2 will be available later
this week.
A matrix of closely tied university-based strategic studies ventures, the
so-called Grand Strategy Programs (GSP), have cropped up on a number of elite
campuses around the country, where they function to serve the national security
warfare state.
In tandem with allied institutes and think tanks across the country, these
programs, centered at Yale University, Duke University, the University of Texas
at Austin, Columbia University, Temple University and, until recently, the University
of Wisconsin-Madison, illustrate the increasingly influential role of a new
breed of warrior academics in the post-9/11 United States. The network marks
the ascent and influence of what might be called the "Long War University."
Ostensibly created to train an up-and-coming elite to see a global "big picture,"
this grand strategy network has brought together scores of foreign policy wonks
heavily invested - literally and figuratively - in an unending quest to maintain
US global supremacy, a campaign which they increasingly refer to as the Long
War.
He Who Pays the Piper ...
The network of grand strategy programs integral to the Long War University
came about through the financial backing of Roger Hertog, the multimillionaire
financial manager, man of the right and a key patron of the contemporary conservative
movement. Hertog is a chairman emeritus of the conservative social policy think
tank the Manhattan Institute, and a board member of the right-wing American
Enterprise Institute, and the Club for Growth.
Hertog additionally served on the executive committee of the influential,
neoconservative and pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP),
and has been a major financial contributor to Taglit-Birthright Israel.
Respected in various circles as a patron of the arts and culture, of libraries
and archives, Hertog was awarded a National Humanities Medal by then-president
George W. Bush in November 2007. The ceremonial citation praised him as one,
"[whose] wisdom and generosity have rejuvenated institutions that are keepers
of American memory."
More recently, Hertog introduced Wisconsin's Gov. Scott Walker at a Manhattan
Institute conference on "A New Social Contract: Reforming the Terms of Public
Employment in America." Embracing the controversial Republican state executive,
Hertog praised him as a figure that would someday be looked upon as someone
who "helped save the country."
As a man in the business of shaping intellectual environments, Hertog has
been described as the "the epitome of the conservative benefactor who bases
his politics on conservative intellectualism and moves patiently and strategically
to create, support and distribute his ideas." Norman Podhoretz, the former editor
of Commentary, said of his longtime friend that, "Roger thinks of philanthropic
endeavors as investments. The return he expects is long range."
Hertog has been a staunch advocate of a conservative, results-based "new
philanthropy" - the replacement of open-ended funding for endowed university
chairs with money for selected projects, made available on a two- or three-year
basis. He makes little distinction between the nonprofit and for-profit ventures
that he funds, and has spoken of "retail" and "strategic philanthropy" as "leverage"
to transform American universities.
The Long War Men at Yale
The Grand Strategy network originally started at Yale University, alma mater
for a long line of US strategic planners and intelligence operatives.
Its founders were the influential conservative "dean of cold war historians,"
John Lewis Gaddis, global historian Paul Kennedy and "diplomat-in-residence"
Charles Hill, the former State Department careerist forced into retirement for
concealing the role of his boss, then-secretary of state George Schultz, during
the Reagan-era Iran-contra scandal.
Yale's GSP became the centerpiece of International Securities Studies (ISS),
"a center for teaching and research in grand strategy," founded in 1988. Kennedy
was the ISS's first director. It was initially funded, in the main, by the John
M. Olin and Smith Richardson Foundations, two major financial backers of numerous
conservative and right-wing public and foreign policy causes.
The plans for the Yale GSP evolved out of a series of discussions between
Kennedy, Hill, Gaddis and others, including the New York Times' Thomas Friedman,
in early 1999. Central to their thinking, according to Gaddis, was their shared
concern "to deliberately ... train the next generation of world leaders."
According to Gaddis, the original ideas shaping the program's curriculum
were drawn from the efforts of an earlier generation of strategic planners,
such as Henry Kissinger, and stemmed from his experience as a mid-1970s faculty
member at the US Naval War College.
The New Haven program became known as the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand
Strategy in 2007, in recognition of a $17.5 million, 15-year endowment.
The first, Nicholas Brady, had been US secretary of the Treasury under presidents
Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and was a former director of the Mitre Corporation,
the privately contracted manager of federally funded research and development
projects for the Department of Defense (DoD) and other agencies.
The other benefactor, Brady's billionaire business associate, Charles B.
Johnson, is a part-owner of the San Francisco Giants and an "overseer" of the
conservative Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, among other things.
Both Brady and Johnson sit on the board of directors of Darby Private Equity
alongside Milwaukee, Wisconsin's philanthropist and venture capitalist Sheldon
Lubar, member of the board of directors of the University of Wisconsin Foundation
and supporter of what had been the University of Wisconsin Madison's GSP.
Increasingly well-endowed over time, the Yale GSP continued to acquire new
associates, among them an additional "diplomat-at-large," John Negroponte, the
former national security adviser, US envoy to the United Nations (UN) and controversial
US ambassador to Honduras during the 1980s contra war against Nicaragua.
While the identities of those associated with the Yale program certainly
speak volumes, the actual program these people devised is far more revealing,
especially since it provided the prototype for future efforts elsewhere.
Aspiring Grand Strategy students are required to write application essays,
and the cross-discipline pool of graduate students and undergraduates is carefully
vetted. The year-long program comprises a focus on "real world practice" and
includes the study of "classics" in strategic thinking, from ancient Chinese
general and "The Art of War" author Sun Tzu and Greek historian Thucydides to
Prussian military strategist Karl von Clausewitz and Kissinger himself.
In addition to their formal studies, students are required to complete summer
projects that have included internships at the European Union's (EU) Institute
for Security Studies and the National Security Agency (NSA). Students completing
the program have gone on to careers with the US Department of State, the CIA,
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the DoD's subcontracted Institute
for Defense Analyses (IDA).
The year-long GSP course concludes with a "crisis simulation" session, in
which teams of students prepare "emergency rapid response" scenarios as if preparing
for a "real time" meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) and the president.
Role-playing the president and other administration officials, the presenters
are then grilled by program faculty who critique their work.
The simulations and seminars have included numbers of exclusive "outside
guests." CIA head David Petraeus, at the time general in command of the US military
operations in the Middle East, paid an unpublicized visit to the Yale GSP's
students and faculty in March 2010.
Other visitors included the likes of Kissinger and George W. Bush's hardline
ambassador to the UN, John Bolton. Observers from the CIA and cadets from West
Point also sat in on the seminars.
In February 2009, US Marine Corps officers met with GSP faculty and students.
The representatives from the "Combat Development Command and the Corp Commandant's
Strategic Initiatives Group" briefed the Yalies and other invited guests on
the Marine's "Vision and Strategy 2025," a planning document describing "how
the Marine Corps' role and posture in national defense will change in the future
global environment."
Gaddis, in fact, told Yale Alumni Magazine in 2003 that, " ... We now offer
workshops in grand strategy at the war colleges and service academies, recreating
a connection with the highest levels of the military ... And Washington has
taken notice."
Perhaps most significantly, a core of Gaddis and Kennedy students have gone
on to become either directors of Grand Strategy projects and related institutes,
or to work as closely connected faculty associates elsewhere.
Such students have included historian Matthew Connelly, head of the Hertog
Global Strategy Initiative at Columbia University; William Hitchcock, now at
the University of Virginia, who helped create the Grand Strategy Program at
Temple University; Mark Lawrence of the University of Texas at Austin; Jeremi
Suri, currently at the University of Texas at Austin, who created the now-defunct
GSP at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Hal Brands, formerly with the
IDA and now the American grand strategy assistant professor of public policy
at Duke University.
Grand Strategy's Launch
In September, 2008, some 20 historians and political scientists from around
the country gathered at an unpublicized location, a private club nearby Yale.
The participants, carefully chosen by the university's GSP directors, had been
invited to meet with Hertog.
The financial management mogul told those at the Yale meet-up that he was
willing to spend as much as $10 million over the coming years to fund scholars
interested in inaugurating GSPs at their respective campuses. He requested short,
three-page proposals from the professors-on-the-rise detailing how they would
use his seed money.
He urged them to think about how to connect their projects with others around
the country to leverage their collective impact, and cautioned that he did not
necessarily want exact replicas of Yale's venture. The subsequent GSPs and allied
programs evolved with his financial assistance.
Long War at Duke
One of the recipients of Hertog "strategic philanthropy" has been the Program
in American Grand Strategy at Duke University, headed by Peter D. Feaver, a
significant figure in strategic planning circles and an important player within
the Long War University. A political scientist with a Harvard PhD, he also is
the director of Triangle Institute for Security Studies (TISS), the well-established
strategic policy consortium with affiliates at Duke, the University of North
Carolina-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University.
An expert on the relationship between civil society and the military, Feaver
served under the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1994 as director for defense
policy and arms control on the NSC. He then worked as special adviser for strategic
planning and institutional reform on the NSC staff during the Bush years, from
June 2005 to July 2007. Feaver is also an affiliate of the Center for a New
American Security (CNAS), the increasingly influential liberal hawk think tank
presided over by the warrior intellectual John Nagl, the former career military
man who helped write the influential Counterinsurgency Field Manual under the
command of former general Petraeus.
The homepage for the Duke GSP reads, "American grand strategy is the collection
of plans and policies by which the leadership of the United States mobilizes
and deploys the country's resources and capabilities, both military and non-military,
to achieve its national goals."
In fulfillment of its mission, Feaver has brought in a number of national
security state notables, among them, in September 2010, then-secretary of defense
Robert Gates, who gave a public address on the all-volunteer military in an
age of the Long War and also taught a session of Feaver's Grand Strategy class.
The Duke GSP and TISS co-sponsored a talk a year earlier by Brig. Gen. H.R.
McMaster on "Counterinsurgency and the War in Afghanistan." McMaster served
in both Iraq wars and worked on the team that designed the Iraq "surge," and,
at the time of his talk, directed a key division of the Army's warfare planning
center at Ft. Monroe, Virginia.
Other guests of the Duke GSP have included Gaddis and Kennedy from Yale;
Michael Doran, the Roger Hertog senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's
Saban Center; and former Bush administration hawks, Stephen Hadley, John Bolton
and Douglas Feith.
The Warriors' Temple
A Hertog Program In Grand Strategy was launched at Temple University in spring
2009, with the assistance of a three-year, $225,000 grant from the Hertog Foundation
arranged through two foreign policy historians, the Yale alumnus Hitchcock and
Richard Immerman, current director of the university's Center for the Study
of Force and Diplomacy (CENFAD)
A CENFAD newsletter stated that Temple had been chosen "as a site for replicating
Yale University's 'Grand Strategy' course - a yearlong seminar on military strategy
taught by Charles Hill, John Lewis Gaddis, and Paul Kennedy ... "
The same article pointed out that Hertog did not believe in making unrestricted
gifts to academe, but rather believed in setting benchmarks to ensure the goals
he envisioned. It went on to state, "that CENFAD, its associates, and students
will expend every effort to meet this challenge to make sure that the Hertog
Seminar in Grand Strategy remains at Temple."
Housed at Temple's History Department, CENFAD was founded in 1993 and "fosters
interdisciplinary faculty and student research on the historic and contemporary
use of force and diplomacy in a global context."
CENFAD is currently directed by Immerman, best known in scholarly circles
for his historical writing on the CIA. Immerman served from 2007 to 2008 as
assistant deputy director of national intelligence, analytic integrity and standards,
and analytic ombudsman at the office of the director of national intelligence,
an oversight position created to ensure the standards and accuracy of national
intelligence documents.
Columbia University's Long War
Columbia University's variant of the Hertog-funded strategic studies program,
the aforementioned Hertog Global Strategy Initiative had its start in 2010 under
the direction of the Yale alumnus and former Gaddis student, the historian Connelly.
Varying from the GSPs elsewhere, Columbia's is a summer program only. The
first year's session, in 2010, focused on "Nuclear Proliferation and the Future
of World Power" and was co-taught by Connelly and University of Texas at Austin's
Francis Gavin. The summer 2011 session focused on "The History and Future Pandemic
Threats and Global Public Health." The projected session for summer 2012 will
focus on "Religious Violence and Apocalyptic Movements."
In many ways, the program clearly resembles that developed by Gaddis at Yale.
Students spend the first three weeks of the summer in "total immersion," training
in the methods of international history. Eight weeks are then spent conducting
independent and team projects, followed by a final week where the students present
their research, develop future scenarios and participate in a crisis simulation
exercise
Visitors to Columbia's GSP have included the likes of Kissinger, former Deputy
Secretary of State James B. Steinberg (also the former dean of the University
of Texas-Austin's Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, under whose auspices
sits the Robert S. Strauss Center of International Security and Law), and Philip
Zelikow, a senior foreign policy official in the Bush administration and former
director of the 9/11 Commission.
For their final week's simulation exercise in summer 2010, seminar students
were led by Dr. Betty Sue Flowers, a leading expert in "future forecasting"
and the guiding force behind Shell Oil's Global Scenarios, a much emulated standard
for corporate and government scenario projects including the National Intelligence
Council's Global Trends Reports.
The Longhorn Long Warriors
In May 2010, Suri, the man behind the now-defunct GSP at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, announced that he was taking a job offer for a joint appointment
at the University of Texas-Austin, including a position at the prestigious Strauss
Center. A brief survey of the roster there suggests that Suri's move to Austin
was the perfect decision for Madison's former wunderkind and "rising star."
The Center has been home for two other Long War intellectuals with high-level
national security state ties. One is Philip Bobbitt, concurrently with the Roger
Hertog Program on Law and National Security at the Columbia University Law School
and a senior fellow at the Strauss Center. The other is Bobby Ray Inman, who
recently became the head of the board of directors of Xe Services (formerly
known as Blackwater USA), the transnational private military and security firm.
He formerly served two terms as dean of the aforementioned home of the Strauss
Center, the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.
Bobbitt, once described by Henry Kissinger as "the outstanding political
philosopher of our time," and by London's Independent as the "president's brain,"
formerly served as the counselor for international law at the State Department
during the George H. W. Bush administration, and at the NSC, where he was director
for intelligence programs. He also was senior director for critical infrastructure
and senior director for strategic planning under President Bill Clinton.
Inman wore multiple hats before joining Xe's board. He was a member of the
board of directors of the infamous coal company Massey Energy; deputy director
of the CIA; director of the NSA; director of naval intelligence; vice director
of the Defense Intelligence Agency; and former director of Wackenhut Corporation,
another transnational security firm and mercenary contractor. He had also been
slated to become President Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense before withdrawing
his name from nomination in 1994.
In 2006, the Strauss Center served as a key backer, along with Columbia University's
American Assembly program, for "The Next Generation Project on US Global Policy
and the Future of International Institutions," a multiyear national effort to
solicit new ideas from a geographically diverse range of strategic thinkers
outside the traditional East Coast corridors of power.
Directed by Gavin, another important figure in Long War University circles,
the project issued a 2010 report on "US Global Policy: Challenges to Building
a 21st Century Grand Strategy." The report was sponsored by the Strauss Center
and CNAS.
Long War University Homecoming
In August, 2010 key members of the Long War grand strategist fraternity gathered
for a "Workshop on the Teaching of Grand Strategy" at the Naval War College
(NWC) at Newport, Rhode Island. It was only logical that they meet there rather
than at some university.
The NWC, with its long history of strategic planning dating back to an earlier
age of global naval power, had earlier developed the curriculum that became
the model for the grand strategies discipline employed at Yale and subsequently
elsewhere. For some attendees, such as Gaddis, who spent part of his early teaching
career there, the summer return to Newport must have seemed like a homecoming.
The conclave was designed to bring together "some of the nation's most influential
thinkers to explore how they design courses on grand strategy." The meet-up's
list of attendees read like an abbreviated "who's who" of warrior academics
and national security state intellectuals.
Those in attendance included Gaddis, Hill and Kennedy, as well as their Yale
disciples, Columbia's Connelly, Duke's Hal Brands, and then-UW-Madison's Suri.
Among the others were Middle East expert Michael Doran, a Roger Hertog senior
fellow at the Saban Center, former deputy assistant secretary of defense under
George W. Bush and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Also present was Peter Mansoor, the current chair of military history at
Ohio State University and a former Army colonel who served as an assistant to
then- general Petraeus while he was commander of the US occupation forces in
Iraq. Also in the mix was Aaron Friedberg, who served as national security adviser
to then-vice president Dick Cheney, and Georgetown's Robert J. Lieber, member
of the ultraconservative Committee on the Present Danger.
A follow-up thank-you email from the NWC's lead organizer spoke of his "hope
that we will stay connected and assist each other in our common enterprise."
The same note addressed to the workshop's participants contained an e-mail address
likely belonging to Lewis "Scooter" Libby, senior vice president of the Hudson
Institute and a past frequent volunteer at the NWC. As Dick Cheney's former
chief of staff, Libby was convicted in connection with the federal investigation
into the "PlameGate" affair.
The NWC conclave might best be described as an imperial war hawk's "how-to"
teach-in. Geared to instruction on how to teach grand strategy to military men,
government officials and university students, its sessions included "'Great
Books' on Strategy," "Economics and Grand Strategy," "Strategic Leadership,"
which explored "the relationship of political and military leadership in strategic
decision making" and "Great Power Wars," which discussed how to teach "the strategic
significance of the commons - maritime, aerospace, and information."
The closing session looked at "how to stay connected with each other," the
"sharing of information about courses," "ways to promote cooperation and break
down barriers," and "how to promote courses in the professional military and
the universities."
The Long War on Campus
The so-called "Grand Strategy Programs" represent but one small component
of a proliferating Long War University complex. The number of university programs
connected to the national security state, the imperial foreign policy establishment
and military planners is vast; so, too, are the numbers of campus-based think
tanks and related institutes - well funded by foundations, individual "philanthropy"
or federal spending - in service to empire.
"Grand strategy" is little more than imperial doctrine, a "soft" public relations
term for strategic studies, a growing academic discipline with origins in the
war ministries of an earlier era's imperial powers.
US warfare doctrine in the post-9/11 era has returned to a focus on counterinsurgency,
or COIN, on fighting limited "asymmetric" wars against unconventional enemies
defined as "terrorists" or insurgents. Not just low-intensity combat, but an
increasingly sophisticated spectrum of intervention - of "nation building" and
the "reconstruction" of other societies - is now included in COIN doctrine.
That more robust notion of COIN has come to occupy a central place in the
thinking of those semi-warrior intellectuals informing one another and an upcoming
generation of their students. Sharing a broad consensus on America's role in
the world and imbued with a sense of American "exceptionalism," the Long War
intellectuals at the national warfare state universities have joined in preparation
for permanent war.
Because some of the primary source material gathered for this two-part series
was obtained via the Wisconsin Open Records Law, the materials are available
upon request.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial
3.0 United States License.
I am also a former military serviceman and would like to offer a counter
point to your assertion that any military coordinated action not to attack
protesters would have to happen on a command level.Individual soldiers printing
their own pamphlets and especially African American soldiers resisting in
Vietnam forced the end of that conflict as command structures were breaking
down.The entire military in Vietnam was on the verge of collapse.Its not
a history many know about but it is true and was one of the main engines
to end the war.
I have faith in my brothers and sisters in the military and once they
understand their power as individuals things will change very quickly.This
is how the Berlin Wall fell,soldiers deciding to stay connected to their
humanity and not kill their fellow citizens.
I will close with the sermon of Bishop Romero the day before he was killed
while giving mass.
“Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own
brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of
God, which says, ‘Thou shalt not kill’. No soldier is obliged to obey
an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law.
It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders.
The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination. …In the
name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to
heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you:
stop the repression”
The day following this speech, Archbishop Romero was murdered. — Archbishop
Oscar Romero
Fiver:
First, he was only “calling” for a refusal to actively participate in
violent repression.
Second, as you appear to be saying that we are already past the point
of no return, i.e., in a state of de facto fascism wherein the military
will “follow orders” no matter how wrong, then is it not every single individual’s
first duty to refuse or otherwise oppose? Do we really want some version
of a Hitler, because that’s where this is headed.
Woodrow Wilson:
“Do we really want some version of a Hitler, because that’s where
this is headed.” -
It’s already not too much different, instead of one individual, we have
a few hundred working together and keeping each other in check. What we
see on MSM is just theater.
McTavish
I believe this is naive as well, although I cherish a hope that it is
not. Our military has been indoctrinated since Vietnam in some very corrosive
beliefs: the myths of American exceptionalism and that America is engaged
in spreading and defending democracy around the world. The cult of technology
and weaponry is a siren call for many. They have been trained to kill and
been sent to wars where war deforms and traumatizes them. When they come
home their needs for treatment and a job were and are largely unmet, even
before the crisis. Some time back I read a piece by a writer who remarked
that war fills some fighters with revulsion and a desire to never fight
a war again, others with an increased lust for war such that they remain
warriors or come home shattered and unable to function. I seem to remember
he stated that it breaks down into thirds. He offered no research citations,
however. I suspect a certain number will resist, the majority will not.
Just as in the police, the military fulfills a personal psychological need,
and often now not a healthy one. The military is a place where the cult
of masculinity is very strong, as it is in the police forces of the country.
Also, the military is a focus of the religious right who have taken over
the chaplaincy with few dissenters and who have melded a ferocious nationalism
with a deformed Christianity and therefore fundamentalism has made considerable
inroads into the military. It is a place where sexual exploitation is routinely
practiced and condoned, both among and between members and through administrative
arrangements for the availability of prostitution in the surrounding communities
around the world. Inasmuch as males are the plurality of members, they suffer
the most sexual abuse, overwhelmingly from other males. Their abuse and
the rampant abuse of female members is swept under the rug by fellow recruits,
officers, and the military hierarchy, regardless of the periodical studies
done by the Pentagon aimed at changing the culture. Sexual exploitation
is a given in war. Some undoubtedly will change their allegiance but the
example of the brutal assault by our president and military on Bradley Manning
and others surely frightens many into acquiescence, however strongly they
detest the oligarchy. However, there is a scenario that may bring more over
time out from under the influence of the military and that is the inevitable
failure of our military endeavors over time throughout the world. We have
already failed in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places but are not facing
it. Our leaders are pouring more and more money into the military and the
national security state and the war on drugs and the war on terrorism. In
time that will lead to break down at home and abroad. Because that also
means a more authoritarian, punitive, repressive state, even then will they
stay to put food in their mouths and a place to sleep at night and protection
from death or incarceration, or will it lead to a realization of the evil
they are doing at the behest of our leaders and a revolt against them? We
shall see. Now and in future, we do and will need more than “good Germans.”
lambert strether
Shorter: The Army is a reflection of the country.
Gil Gamesh:
Standing armies are relatively recent in our history. In any event, militarism
has infected the body politic since the birth of the National Security State
after WWII (see Chalmers Johnson)and we are off the charts, so to speak.
Yes, our social controls are quite effective, and there has been little
or no need to impose overwhelming, military force domestically (let’s assume
that legal constraints such as posse commitatus really aren’t constraints
to State power (after all, POTUS can murder an American at his pleasure).
However, a perfect storm is upon us: environmental collapse, peak oil,
and a global financial system drowned by debt. Desperate times, they will
say. Hence, the writers justified concern about being asked to shoot Americans.
It’s a real prospect. And that is tragic.
Hugh:
There are cycles of action and reaction between the 99%, what used to
be called the masses, and the powers that be with increasing force: police,
militarized police, National Guard, and regular military. What is interesting
here is that our elites are already using militarized police against even
non-violent protests. Each escalation of force brings short term gains to
the authorities but undermines their overall legitimacy, that is while they
win the battles they set themselves on a track to lose the war. The forces
the elites use to repress begin to question whether making war against their
fellow citizens is what they signed up for and critically whether they are
on the right side. There will always be some who will stick by the status
quo no matter what but many will not.
Cracks appear usually between low and mid-level
service people on the one side and the top echelons which have been chosen
for loyalty to the elites. The great fear in such organizations is a loss
of cohesion. When there are defections and cohesion begins
to break down, many higher level officers will militate for preserving their
organization even at the expense of abandoning the current elites. That’s
generally the history of these things. Other ideas are welcome.
Tim M
I agree with the sentiment of the
letter, but the Posse Comitatus Act (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act ) puts serious limits
on the ability of any government officials to use Federal troops to “execute
the law” in the US.
It isn’t to say someone won’t try
(they have as recently as 2009). However, they will get slapped down hard
by the courts after the fact. There are a few exceptions, such as open insurrection
or the use of a nuclear/radiological weapon, but for the most part any government
official including the President is prohibited from using troops against
the people of the United States.
So as long as protests remain peaceful,
legally they can’t employ US armed forces for much more than traffic control.
Fiver:
ust quickly:
While it’s hard to imagine the need for a military deployment given how
large and heavily militarized police forces are, that difficulty (imagining)
evaporates once the enormity of the stakes become clear over the next few
years. This is not “only” a financial crisis. This is the end of an historical
epoch driven by the enormous superiority of Western technical/organizational
power both economic and military. But as Gil Gamesh and a couple others
alluded to, this crisis is fundamentally about having hit LIMITS. We grew
billions of people from oil, and savaged the environment in the process.
Now both sides of this mindless, consumptive stupidity are about to severely
chomp our asses.
The US elite has determined that instead
of acknowledging reality, it will beggar the rest of the world to maintain
its own position. It it only a matter of time before Bernanke
goes for broke trying to print another asset bubble. He will partially succeed,
though most people now hurting will go on hurting. But when this final effort
fails, and badly, that’s when we’re looking at major domestic conflict to
go with on-going, and worsening, global conflict.
Which brings us back to how the military
fits. I for one can readily see something akin to global civil war, or at
least widespread, serious global civil strife. In the States, it could so,
so easily take on a form that resonates with the Civil War.
Just look at where the bases largely are. I can also easily imagine the
military itself splitting.
To “pooh-pooh” such scenarios through some sort of belief in US “specialness”
is well and truly blinkered.
I commmend this young man, am sure there are many more like him, and
wish them all well in the rather dismal future that is to come.
Angry Voter:
The people I know who hate the crooked occupational government the most
are combat veterans.
For some it takes a couple of tours but eventually everyone can see that
the government is a tool of the 1% and they use people and then leave them
stranded when they can’t be used any more.
Now the banking cabal is conspiring to steal veteran, widow and orphan
pensions.
Psychoanalystus:
It is unlikely that any American armed forces will be involved in a domestic
conflict. The idea is to keep them overseas, either on bases or in imperial
wars, such as the upcoming one with Iran.
What I think is far more likely to take place is the involvement of one
or both of these:
1. Involvement of private American mercenary corporations such as Blackwater,
who would have no trouble shooting unarmed civilians.
2. Involvement of foreign forces, as was the case with the Saudi armed
forces in Bahrain, earlier this year.
Recent United States military triumphs in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Yemen, and against suspected international terrorists anywhere on the planet
have evoked hallelujahs by politicians, the media, and the American people.
Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Anwar al-Awlaki are dead.
Libya is no longer tyrannized by Gaddafi. Iraq has been emancipated from Saddam's
villainies. Afghans are not oppressed by Taliban. And Pakistan and Yemen have
not been overrun by international terrorists or Islamic extremists.
But to borrow from King Pyrrhus of Epirus after defeating the Romans in the
Battle of Asculum, these so-called victories threaten the ruination of the United
States. They established precedents, practices, and principles that vandalized
the Constitution, crippled the rule of law, subverted individual liberty, generated
new enemies, and drained trillions from the national treasury. If there are
better ways to destroy the handiwork of the Founding Fathers, they do not readily
come to mind.
President Obama commenced war against Libya to save civilian lives. But Congress
did not authorize the war as required by Article I, section 8, clause 11 of
the Constitution. And Congress did not appropriate funds for the war as required
by Article I, section 9, clause 7. Obama embraced the counter-constitutional
principle without congressional challenge that the President is empowered to
initiate war against any nation, organization, or person on the planet to advance
whatever he unilaterally ordains is a national interest. The President also
flouted the War Powers Resolution of 1973 by failing to receive congressional
authority to continue the Libyan war longer than 60 days with the Orwellian
excuse that dropping bombs and firing missiles are not "hostilities"-- unless
the United States is the target.
Obama's Libyan adventure has been wrongly portrayed as a gain for human rights
or democracy abroad. To be sure, Gaddafi was a tyrannical wretch, but he was
not the responsibility of the United States. His successors could be worse,
and the United States is now saddled with moral responsibility for their accession
to power.
Generally speaking, Libyan allegiances are to tribe, ethnicity, religion, or
oil riches. Due process, elections, the rule of law, a separation of religion
from government, non-discrimination, and checks and balances are alien to their
intellectual and cultural universes. Accordingly, revolutionaries detain thousands
of Libyans without accusation or trial. Torture is routine. Black Africans have
been imprisoned or killed solely because of race. And Gadaffi's execution in
custody provoked no emphatic condemnation from the transitional Libyan government.
Political power in Libya grows out of the barrel of a gun. Libya's new Constitution
contemplates Sharia as the guidepost for all laws, as announced by the departed
head of the National Transitional Council. Convicted but freed Lockerbie bomber
Ali al-Megrahi has not been delivered into United States custody. Finally, the
Libyan war was fought without even a pretense of advancing American safety,
freedom, or prosperity.
President Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 pursuant to an unconstitutional delegation
of congressional authority to commence war. The reason for the invasion remains
opaque. Many of the principals involved remain clueless as to what motivated
Bush's decision. The intelligence products of the C.I.A. were manipulated or
misrepresented by the Bush administration to manufacture public and congressional
support for attacking Saddam Hussein. Abu Ghraib and Blackwater severely tarnished
the American escutcheon. More American soldiers have died in Iraq than civilians
were killed in the 9/11 abominations. The United States has expended $1 trillion
on the Iraq war, excluding the costly medical care that will be required to
treat injured or traumatized American soldiers.
The Iraq war unwittingly harmed professed United States national security
interests. Iran became the regional hegemon, and accelerated its nuclear arms
program. Iraq's oil production plunged. The United States alienated Turkey by
cosseting Iraqi Kurds in the north, providing refuge for the PKK. Iraq is now
hostile towards Israel and friendly towards the Palestinian Authority and Syria.
Even with the depraved Saddam as a benchmark, human rights and democratic
practices have only marginally improved under Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
The judiciary is neither independent nor impartial. Iraq is a government of
men, not of laws. Corruption is ubiquitous. Torture is commonplace. The nation
is fractured between Shiite, Sunni, and Kurds, with the Shiite exerting political
domination. There is no agreement on the division of oil revenues between the
central and regional governments or the fate of oil-rich Kirkuk. The Iraqi Constitution
makes Islam the official state religion and a fundamental source of legislation.
No law may contradict its universal tenants.
The United States war in Afghanistan and against international terrorism
gave birth to torture with impunity; indefinite detentions of alleged enemy
combatants (including American citizens) at Guantanamo Bay without accusation
or trial; military commissions denuded of the trappings of due process to prosecute
alleged war crimes; illegal interceptions of the phone conversations or emails
of Americans without judicial warrants in criminal violation of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act; and, presidential assassinations of an American
citizen and his 16-year-old apolitical son based on secret evidence and secret
law. The war against international terrorism also established the precedent
of perpetual war and a planet-wide battlefield where military force is always
legitimate.
The United States has expended more than $1 trillion on the Afghan war at
a rate of $350 million per day. Approximately 2,000 American soldiers have died
there. Predator drones have created enemies by killing innocent civilians through
imprecise or erroneous targeting. The Afghan Constitution makes Islam the state
religion, and stipulates that no law may contradict the beliefs and provisions
of the sacred religion of Islam. The Afghan government is corrupt, illegitimate,
ineffectual, weak, and popularly execrated. Opium production flourishes. Loyalties
are to tribes, ethnic groups, or religion--not to the nation. Women remain third-class
citizens. Human rights like free speech, free press, and freedom of religion
are honored more in the breach than in the observance.
The Afghan war is objectless. The United States can easily defend its sovereignty
from any attack emanating from Afghanistan with soldiers deployed at home. An
anticipatory self-defense perimeter thousands of miles away is preposterous
and prohibitively expensive.
Politicians are chronically myopic and generally ill-educated. Whenever they
claim victory, skepticism is justified. The United States crowed about evicting
the Soviet Union from Afghanistan through underwriting the mujahedeen, including
Osama bin Laden, the Haqqani network, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, with money and
stinger missiles. And then came 9/11, perpetrated by our erstwhile anti-Soviet
friends--turning a previous victory into ashes.
The war on terror continues; so does the cost and the chronicling.
“You can’t make informed decisions without this information,” said Catherine
Lutz of Brown University.
Lutz is co-director of the Eisenhower Project at Brown’s Watson Institute
for International Studies. The organization’s “Costs of War” study has been
reported worldwide with its website receiving 50,000 hits from 169 countries
since its June release. Visit costsofwar.org.
Hits rose in August during federal debt negotiations, Lutz said; and in September
during the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Now we’ve reached another notable prompt.
Friday is the 10th anniversary of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.
Thursday, “Costs of War” was presented in Washington to a congressional panel
on the war in Afghanistan.
The report’s cost calculations aren’t finished because the war isn’t finished.
“We’re still following the numbers,” Lutz said.
The numbers, Lutz said, are “stunning”: 225,000 killed, and up to $4 trillion
spent, factoring in future medical care for disabled veterans.
The 22 report researchers, will offer another report next fall, Lutz said,
offering bigger costs for the United States, and for its allies, including Iraq
and Afghanistan. Also, Lutz said, the follow-up will chronicle the profits of
war.
In 2008, Lutz said, the Pentagon paid military contractor Lockheed Martin
$30 billion.
“Lockheed received nearly more money from the government than the EPA, the
Department of Labor and the Department of Transportation combined,” Lutz said.
Bruce
Fein is a Senior Policy Advisor to the Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign,
Author, 'American Empire: Before the Fall'
Earlier this year, Remember Building
7 commissioned a Siena poll that found 3 out of 4 New Yorkers had never
seen footage of Building 7. If you would like to see a majority of New Yorkers
witness footage of Building 7,
Please Donate
Now. This campaign has the power to put Building 7’s collapse in front of
10 million New Yorkers and create a groundswell of demand for a new investigation,
but only with your support.
September 11, 2011 marks the 10th anniversary of the events in New York and
Washington that have played a dramatic role in modern history. These events
have provided a pretext for a War on Terror that has replaced the Cold War as
a global conflict framework within which military invasions and occupations
have taken place, as well as violations of international law and human rights
and a widespread assault on the civil rights crucial to democracies. Global
military spending, which began a rapid downswing after the end of the Cold War,
has, with the help of the official account of the 9/11 attacks, risen to Cold
War levels and continues to rise. The focus on military solutions to complex
human problems has sidetracked humanity at the very moment when international
cooperation is most required to address genuine challenges that humanity faces.
In the meantime, the credibility of the official reports on the 9/11 attacks
(by the 9/11 Commission, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National
Institute of Standards and Technology, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and
other government or government-appointed agencies) has been questioned by millions
of citizens in the United States and abroad, including victim family members,
expert witnesses and international legal experts.
The International Center for 9/11 Studies has therefore decided to sponsor
four days of International Hearings in the city of Toronto, Canada on the 10th
anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001. During these Hearings, which
will be broadcasted via the Internet, various expert witnesses will present
the best available evidence into the case, discovered in the ten years since
the 9/11 events occurred.
Objectives of the Hearings:
(1) To present evidence that the U.S. government’s official investigation
into the events of September 11, 2001, as pursued by various government and
government-appointed agencies, is seriously flawed and has failed to describe
and account for the 9/11 events.
(2) To single out the most weighty evidence of the inadequacy of the U.S.
government’s investigation; to organize and classify that evidence; to preserve
that evidence; to make that evidence widely known to the public and to governmental,
non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations.
(3) To submit a record and a summary of the Hearings, together with signed
Statutory Declarations by witnesses, to relevant governments, groups and international
agencies with the request that a full and impartial investigation be launched
into the events of September 11, 2001, which have been used to initiate military
invasions and to restrict the rights of citizens.
(4) To engage the attention of the public, the international community and
the media through witness testimony as well as through media events broadcasted
via the Internet during the four day event.
Sigmund Freud once mentioned the defense offered by a man who was accused
by his neighbor of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition. In the first
place, he had returned the kettle undamaged; in the second place it already
had holes in it when he borrowed it; and in the third place, he had never borrowed
it at all.
That man's name?
Dick Cheney.
On "Morning Joe" on
MSNBC
on Thursday, the former Vice President claimed that the intelligence used to
invade Iraq had been sound and accurate; the faulty intelligence was all Bill
Clinton's fault; the invasion didn't do any damage but rather it was the Iraqis
who damaged Iraq; and any invasion causes horrific things to happen, that just
comes with the territory.
This incoherence was interspersed with gossip about Cheney's marriage and
his friends and his whole lovable social self. That lie may have overshadowed
the more serious ones. When in the hell did Cheney become respectable, much
less lovable? But that's a distraction. Cheney's crimes have long been
catalogued.
Joe Scarborough began his Cheney interview by asking, not why did you commit
so many crimes and abuses, but how did you, dear Dick, suffer from having the
image of Darth Vader imposed on you? Cheney replies that he had fun wearing
a Darth Vader mask. But listen carefully for the Freudian slip: he says he wore
it in the President's office, not the VICE President's office.
Cheney claims he didn't transform into Darth Vader, and of course he didn't.
Cheney was an immoral power-mad neocon for decades who consistently favored
presidential prerogatives and aggressive militarism. But Cheney claims that
what changed was that a terrorist act became an act of war rather than a crime.
Did it do that all on its own?
Cheney slips in his usual baseless defense of torture
and related abuses as having served some useful purpose. Scarborough does not
follow up on that claim. Instead, he asks about Colin Powell's comments on Cheney's
book. Nice and gossipy. But Lawrence Wilkerson's more serious comments on the
same topic, including his expression of willingness to testify against Cheney
in court, go unmentioned.
Cheney then claims the Iraq lies were well-intended
mistakes and basically accurate at the same time. Content with this, Scarborough
focuses in on DC social scene changes over the decades. That's journalism!
Mike Barnicle, a SERIOUS journalist, then asks Cheney if he regrets the death
of a U.S. soldier in a humvee that was operating in Iraq without proper armor.
This is a question along the lines of "Why did the military waste $60 billion
in Iraq?" These talking heads are not 60 seconds from the topic of the lies
that launched an illegal and immoral war that killed hundreds of thousands of
people, almost none of them Americans, and Barnicle wants to know why the humvees
weren't better armored. Wednesday's
news of U.S. troops having murdered Iraqi children gets no mention. This
is breakfast table reporting for goodness sake! And yet, even with the softball
question about the humvee armor, Cheney makes excuses and points out that things
like that just happen in wars.
Well, exactly. But why do the wars happen?
Finally Scarborough asks Cheney why the U.S. military
invaded Iraq, and Cheney says it was the right thing to do. He paints it as
defensive. We attacked an unarmed impoverished nation halfway around the globe
IN DEFENSE. Cheney even regurgitates a long-debunked claim about Mohamed Atta
meeting with Iraqi officials. Next, Mika Brzezinski asks Cheney about the war
lies, and Cheney blames Clinton. Now, I'm no fan of Clinton, and he told plenty
of his own lies and engaged in plenty of power abuses tied to wars and military
actions, but the fixing of the facts around the policy on Iraq was a major operation
created after Clinton was gone. On this, Scarborough and Brzezinski had no follow
up questions.
Instead, Barnicle helpfully turned to the topic of moving troops early out
of Afghanistan and into preparation for war in Iraq. Cheney dishonestly suggested
that no troops were moved to Iraq until a year and a half later. Then Cheney
claims the Iraqis are the ones who did all the damage in Iraq. And on that note,
Scarborough insists on chattering about Cheney's marriage, while Brzezinski
insists on hearing about Cheney's sedated dreams of Italian villas.
Cheney admitted in this interview that his vice presidential role was unique.
But that's not actually an argument for buying his book. It's an argument for
amending our Constitution to include a ban on vice presidents exercising executive,
as opposed to legislative, power.
The trouble is that there's little point in amending our laws until we start
enforcing them. Dick Cheney is a human advertisement for the absence of the
rule of law in the United States. Wilkerson thinks Cheney is bluffing because
he is scared of being prosecuted. I think Cheney knows that could only happen
abroad. He is safe here because the Justice Department answers to Obama, and
Obama is protecting Cheney because Obama is continuing similar crimes and abuses.
If Obama were to allow Attorney General Eric Holder
to enforce our laws against Dick Cheney, Obama might very well save his own
electoral prospects. But he would put himself at risk of future prosecution.
The question of whether we will have the rule of law becomes the question of
whether Obama wants to trade four years of power for decades in prison. That's
not how it is supposed to work.
This represents a cynically clever strategy on the part of the ruling plutocracy
that benefits from war, militarism, debt and deficit: instead of financing their
wars and military adventures by paying taxes proportionate to their income, they
give themselves tax breaks, finance their wars of choice through borrowing, and
then turn around and lend money (unpaid taxes) to the government and earn interest.
The wealthy have thus successfully converted their tax obligations to credit claims,
that is, lending instead of paying taxes, which is in essence a disguised form of
robbery.
Here is how Senator Bernie Sanders (of Vermont) put it:
"The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping
new details about how the US provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret
loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst
economic crisis since the Great Depression."
This explains why the federal debt has increased from $9.2 trillion in 2007
to $14.2 trillion in 2011, an increase of nearly 55%.
It is now common knowledge that a major contributor to the rising debt and
deficit is the escalating spending on war and militarism, nearly doubled over
the past decade (from $295 billion in 2000 to the current $560 billion).
While the official Pentagon budget for the 2011
fiscal year is $560 billion, the real figure is nearly twice as much as the
official figure.
The reason for this understatement is that the official Department of Defense
budget excludes not only the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but
also a number of other major cost items. These disguised cost items include:
budgets for the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, nuclear weapons,
veterans' programs, most military retiree payments, interest payments on money
borrowed to fund military programs in past years, and more.
Once these misplaced or disguised expenditures
are added to the official Pentagon budget, total "security"/military-related
budget items would amount to slightly more than $1.1 trillion, which absorbs
about one-third of the entire 2011 federal budget of $3.4 trillion.
Another major contributor to the rising debt and deficit has been the huge
tax breaks granted giant corporations and the very affluent layers of the society.
For example, according to Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), known for its accurate
reports on taxation, the combined amount of taxes paid by the following 12 corporations
for the 2008-2010 period was zero - no, it was less than zero! Collectively,
they got $2.5 billion in refunds.
The 12 corporations were: Exxon Mobile, Wells Fargo, DuPont, American Electric
Power, Boeing, FedEx, IBM, General Electric, Honeywell International, United
Technologies, Verizon Communications, and Yahoo. CTJ reports that "from 2008
through 2010, these 12 companies reported $171 billion in pretax US profits.
But as a group, their federal income taxes were negative: –$2.5 billion." (It
must be pointed out that although the total federal income taxes for the group
of 12 as a whole was negative, four out of 12 paid some federal tax, but the
little tax that those four paid was more than offset by the other seven companies'
not having paid any.)
This is an indication of how major US corporations pay - or avoid paying
- their tax liabilities. The extremely rich and powerful interest groups have
(since the late 1970s and early 1980s) deliberately used a combination of raising
military spending and lowering their tax obligations in order to redistribute
the national resources from the bottom up. As this combination leads to increases
in debt and deficit, it then forces cuts on non-military public spending.
This represents a cynically clever strategy on the part of the ruling plutocracy
that benefits from war, militarism, debt and deficit: instead of financing their
wars and military adventures by paying taxes proportionate to their income,
they give themselves tax breaks, finance their wars of choice through borrowing,
and then turn around and lend money (unpaid taxes) to the government and earn
interest. The wealthy have thus successfully converted their tax obligations
to credit claims, that is, lending instead of paying taxes, which is in essence
a disguised form of robbery.
It is obvious from this brief analysis that Washington's political dogs howling
at the non-military public spending as the source of the escalating national
debt and deficit are barking up the wrong tree. As long as the out-of-control
spending on war and militarism is not contained, the multi-trillion dollar corporate
welfare handouts (in the form of tax giveaways and costly rescue/bailout packages)
are not curtailed, and the skyrocketing costs of health care are not restrained,
the national debt and deficit are bound to continue their upward trend.
It is also obvious that the American people are lied to when they are told
that all the wrangling that is going on in Washington over the debt ceiling
is to reduce national debt. In reality, the national debt will continue to rise
even if the corporate government takes a few trillion dollars out of it by further
reducing the non-military public spending, that is, by further reducing the
people's standard of living.
Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics, Drake University,
Des Moines, Iowa. He is the author of The Political Economy of US Militarism
(Palgrave-Macmillan 2007) and Soviet Non-capitalist Development: The
Case of Nasser's Egypt (Praeger Publishers 1989).
By now, it seems as if everybody and his brother has joined the debt-ceiling
imbroglio in Washington, perhaps the strangest homespun drama of our time. It's
as if Washington's leading political players, aided and abetted by the media's
love of the horse race, had eaten LSD-laced brownies, then gone on stage before
an audience of millions to enact a psychotic spectacle of American decline.
And yet, among the dramatis personae we've been watching, there are clearly
missing actors. They happen to be out of town, part of a traveling roadshow.
When it comes to their production, however, there has, of late, been little
publicity, few reviewers, and only the most modest media attention. Moreover,
unlike the scenery-chewing divas in Washington, these actors have simply
been going about their business as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening.
On July 25, for instance, while House Speaker John Boehner raced around the
Capitol desperately pressing Republican House members for votes on a debt-ceiling
bill that Harry Reid was calling dead-on-arrival in the Senate, America's new
ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, took his oath of office in distant
Kabul. According to the New York Times, he then gave a short speech "warning"
that Western powers needed to "proceed carefully" and emphasized that when it
came to the war, there would "be no rush for the exits".
If, in Washington, people were rushing for those exits, no chance of that
in Kabul almost a decade into America's second Afghan War. There, the air strikes,
night raids, assassinations, roadside bombs, and soldier and civilian deaths,
we are assured, will continue to 2014 and beyond. In a war in which every gallon
of gas used by a fuel-guzzling US military costs $400 to $800 to import, time
is no object and - despite the panic in Washington over debt payments - neither
evidently is cost.
In Iraq, meanwhile, in year eight of America's armed involvement, US officials
are still wangling to keep significant numbers of American troops stationed
there beyond an agreed end-of-2011 withdrawal date. And the State Department
is preparing to hire a small army of 5,000-odd armed mercenaries (with their
own mini-air force) to keep the American "mission" in that country humming along
to the tune of billions of dollars.
In Libya, the American/North Atlantic Treaty Organization war effort, once
imagined as a brief spasm of shock-'n'-awe firepower that would oust autocrat
Muammar Gaddafi in a nanosecond, is now in its fifth month with neither an end
nor a serious reassessment in sight, and no mention of costs there either.
In Yemen and Somalia, the drones, Central Intelligence Agency and military
are being sent in, and special operations forces built up, while in the region
a new base is being constructed and older ones expanded in the never-ending
war against al-Qaeda, its affiliates, wannabes, and any other nasties around.
(At the same time, the Barack Obama administration is leaking information that
the original al-Qaeda teeters at the edge of defeat, even as it intensifies
the CIA's drone war in the Pakistani tribal borderlands.) And further expansion
of the war on terror - watch out, al-Qaeda in North Africa! - seems to be a
given.
Meanwhile back in Washington not, mind you, the Washington of the debt-ceiling
crisis, but the war capital on the banks of the Potomac - national security
spending still seems to be on an upward trajectory. At $526 billion (without
the costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars added in), the 2011 Pentagon budget is,
as Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense under president Ronald
Reagan, has written, "in real or inflation adjusted dollars… higher than at
any time since World War II, including the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the height
of the Reagan buildup." The 2012 Pentagon budget is presently slated to go even
higher.
Senator John McCain recently raised the question of Pentagon spending in
tight times with General Martin Dempsey, the newly nominated chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. He asked about a plan proposed by Obama to cut $400 billion
in Pentagon funds over 12 years, as well as proposals kicking around congress
for cutting up to $800 billion over the same period.
General Dempsey replied, "I haven't been asked to look at that number. But
I have looked and we are looking at $400 billion. Based on the difficulty of
achieving the $400 billion cut, I believe achieving $800 billion would be extraordinarily
difficult and very high risk."
In little of the reporting on this was it apparent that Obama's $400 billion
in Pentagon "cuts" are not cuts at all - not unless you consider an obese person,
who continues eating at the same level but reduces his dreams of ever grander
future repasts, to be on a diet. The "cuts" in the White House proposal, that
is, will only be from projected future Pentagon growth rates.
Nor were the "savings" of up to one trillion dollars over a decade being
projected by Senator Harry Reid as part of his deficit-reduction plan cuts either,
not in the usual sense anyway. They are expected savings based largely on the
prospective winding down of America's wars and, like so much funny money, could
evaporate with the morning dew. (In his last minute deal with Boehner, Obama's
Pentagon "savings" have, in fact, been reduced to a provisional $350 billion
over 10 years.)
So here's a question at a moment when financial mania has Washington by the
throat: How would you define the state of mind of our war-makers, who are carrying
on as if trillion-dollar wars were an American birthright, as if the only sensible
role for the United States was to eternally police the planet, and as if garrisoning
US troops, corporate mercenaries, and special operations forces in scores and
scores of countries was the essence of life as it should be lived on this planet?
When I was kid, I used to be fascinated by a series of ads filled with visual
absurdities, in which, for instance, five-legged cows floated through clouds.
Each ad's tagline went something like: What's wrong with this picture?
So imagine two worlds, both centered in Washington. In one, they're heading
for the exits, America's credit rating is in danger of being downgraded, jobs
are disappearing, infrastructure is eroding, homeownership levels are falling
rapidly, foreclosures are sky-high, times are bad, and even the president admits
that the political system designated to make things better is "dysfunctional";
in the other, the exits are there, but there's no rush to use them, not with
those global ramparts to be guarded, those wars to be fought,
and a massive national security complex - larger
than anything ever imagined when the US still faced a nuclear-armed superpower
enemy - to feed and cultivate.
Now tell me: What's wrong with this picture?
Two worlds, two productions, one over-the-top and raising fears of bankruptcy,
the other steady as she goes - and (so it seems) never the twain shall meet.
And yet look again and those two worlds will fuse before your eyes, those two
Washingtons will meld into a single capital city. Then it will be clearer that
the actors at center stage and those traveling in the provinces are putting
on linked parts of a single performance. The financial problems of one will
turn out to be inextricably linked to the other; the lack of an effective stimulus
package in the first connected to the endless series of stimulus packages -
all that failed "nation-building" in the imperium - in the second.
Like some Roman god, it turns out that schizophrenic Washington has two faces,
each reflecting a different aspect of American decline.
In one, everybody can spot the madness.
In the other, it's less evident, even though untold American treasure
- literally trillions of dollars communities here desperately need - has
been poured into a series of wars, conflicts, and war preparations without
a victory, or even a significant success on the horizon.
(Greeted as if World War II had been won, the killing of Osama bin Laden
should have been a reminder of the success of the "war on terror" for a man
with few "troops" and relatively modest amounts of money who somehow managed
to land Washington in a financial and military quagmire.)
One American world, one Washington, is devouring the other. Think of this
as the half-hidden psychodrama of this American moment.
Put another way, for months Americans have been focused on raising that debt
ceiling, as onscreen countdown clocks ticked away to disaster. In the process,
few have asked the obvious question: Isn't it time to lower America's war ceiling?
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation
Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture,
a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of
Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the
New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years.
His latest book is The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Haymarket
Books),
But as we have surveyed the Murdoch scandal of the past fortnight, few could
deny that it has revealed how an international company has bullied and bought
its way to control of party leaderships, police forces and regulatory processes.
David Cameron, escaping skilfully from the tight corner into which he had got
himself, admitted as much. Mr Murdoch himself, like a tired old Godfather, told
the House of Commons media committee on Tuesday that he was so often courted
by prime ministers that he wished they would leave him alone.
... ... ...
The Left was right that the power of Rupert Murdoch had become an anti-social
force. The Right (in which, for these purposes, one must include the New Labour
of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown) was too slow to see this, partly because it
confused populism and democracy. One of Mr Murdoch’s biggest arguments for getting
what he wanted in the expansion of his multi-media empire was the backing of
“our readers”. But the News of the World and the Sun went out of the way in
recent years to give their readers far too little information to form political
judgments. His papers were tools for his power,
not for that of his readers. When they learnt at last the methods
by which the News of the World operated, they withdrew their support.
It has surprised me to read fellow defenders of the free press saying how
sad they are that the News of the World closed.
In its stupidity, narrowness and cruelty, and in its methods, the paper was
a disgrace to the free press. No one should ever have banned
it, of course, but nor should anyone mourn its passing. It is rather as if supporters
of parliamentary democracy were to lament the collapse of the BNP. It was a
great day for newspapers when, 25 years ago, Mr Murdoch beat the print unions
at Wapping, but much of what he chose to print on those presses has been a great
disappointment to those of us who believe in free markets because they emancipate
people. The Right has done itself harm by covering up for so much brutality.
The credit crunch has exposed a similar process of how emancipation can be hijacked.
The greater freedom to borrow which began in the 1980s was good for most people.
A society in which credit is very restricted is one in which new people cannot
rise. How many small businesses could start or first homes be bought without
a loan? But when loans become the means by which millions finance mere consumption,
that is different.
And when the banks that look after our money take it away, lose it and then,
because of government guarantee, are not punished themselves, something much
worse happens. It turns out – as the Left always claims –
that a system purporting to advance the many has
been perverted in order to enrich the few. The global banking
system is an adventure playground for the participants, complete with spongy,
health-and-safety approved flooring so that they bounce when they fall off.
The role of the rest of us is simply to pay.
Jeff Sachs
wonders why military spending isn't a large part of the budget talks:
Obama could have cut hundreds of billions of dollars in spending that has
been wasted on America's disastrous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and
Yemen, but here too it's been all bait and switch.
Obama is either afraid to stand up to the Pentagon or is part of the
same neoconservative outlook as his predecessor. The real
cause hardly matters since the outcome is the same: America is more militarily
engaged under Obama than even under Bush. Amazing but true. ... The American
people ... have said repeatedly that they want a budget that sharply cuts
the military, ends the wars, raises taxes on the rich, protects the poor
and the middle class, and invests in America's future
I've been wondering the same thing. Military spending has hardly been mentioned
in the budget debate.
The Costs of War Since 2001- Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan
Budgeted and Long Term Economic Costs
We calculate that the U.S. federal government has already spent between
$2.3 and 2.6 trillion in constant 2011 dollars. This number is greater than
the trillion dollars that the President and others say the U.S. has already
spent on war since 2001. Our estimate is larger because we include more
than the direct Pentagon appropriation for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,
and the larger global war on terror; wars always cost more than what the
Pentagon spends for the duration of the combat operation.
But the wars will certainly cost more than has already been spent. Including
the amounts that the U.S. is obligated to spend for veterans, and the likely
costs of future fighting as well as the social costs that the veterans and
their families will pay, we calculate that the wars will cost between $3.7
and 4.4 trillion dollars.
In March of this year, the Congressional Research Service report by Amy
Belasco on the costs of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other operations related
to the war on terror estimated that the Pentagon allocations for war through
the current fiscal year were already $1,208 billion in current dollars.
The CRS report also added to war-related spending by the Veterans Administration
and the State Department/USAID, and concluded that the wars cumulated costs
through FY2011 were $1,283.3 billion dollars. In 2008, Joseph Stiglitz and
Linda Bilmes published The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the
Iraq Conflict, totaling many of the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
to that point and projecting the costs into future decades.
We found that the CRS report of appropriations and estimate of the budgeted
costs of the war, which was extremely thorough, nonetheless did not include
some important and ultimately expensive costs of the war. When we total
the costs of what the U.S. has spent — the budgeted costs of the war (Congressional
war appropriations) and our incurred obligations for Veterans medical and
disability — the total is more than the CRS reports and already exceed the
Stiglitz and Bilmes estimate of $3 trillion for present and future costs
of the wars.
These Totals Do Not Include: Medicare costs for injured veterans after
age 65; Expenses for veterans paid for by state and local government budgets;
Promised $5.3 billion reconstruction aid for Afghanistan; Additional macroeconomic
consequences of war spending including infrastructure and jobs The largest
single component of costs to date is Pentagon war spending. Since 2001,
in addition to the $1,313 billion in 2011 constant dollars (using the Pentagon's
own deflators) spent for the wars, $5,238.7 billion in constant dollars
was appropriated for ostensibly non-war DOD expenses (also known as the
“base” DOD budget) up to the end of 2011....
Catherine Lutz is Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Family Professor of Anthropology
and International Studies at the Watson Institute for International Studies
and Chair, Department of Anthropology at Brown University.
I don't think that I would have hacked into Milly Dowler's phone, but people
with stressful careers and huge mortgages can be driven to the maddest of choices.
I left with my principles intact.
The phone hacking affair is a "three-headed monster", according to the Labour
MP Chris Bryant. According to PoliticsHome, this is what he told BBC News.
There was the original criminality at the News of the World - the phone
hacking. There was the attempt to hush it up by News International and there
was the failure of the Metropolitan police to investigate, probably because
the Murdoch empire had all its tentacles creeping into every nook and cranny
of the Metropolitan police ... I think it is that combination that makes
it into one of the biggest scandals that we've known in British political
history for the last 75 years.
...This is what Sheridan said about what he would be asking.
I like to know what kind of relationship [Murdoch has] had with senior
politicians, what influence does he think he has had ... What it won't be
today, as some of the leading commentators were suggesting that it will
be, [is] some sort of witch-hunt of the MPs against the press. That is certainly
not what it's about, we will be asking in a polite way, robust questions.
Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) A nation reaps what t sows, August 27, 2004
By - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
C. Johnson wrote a dark and very revealing book. He shows forcefully that
the US became a militarist empire, which eroded the democratic underpinnings
of the constitutional empire and transfered power tot the Pentagon and the intelligence
agencies. His thesis is profusely illustrated: US military and intelligence
interventions worldwide, the enormous defense budget and hundreds of US bases
all over the planet. This imperialistic behaviour has also an economic veil
(neo-liberalism), which the author castigates as 'rich countries kicking the
ladder to keep poor nations from catching up' via the WTO and the IMF. But this
brutal behaviour brings with it inhuman sorrows.
First, a state of perpetual war leading to more terrorism. For the author,
the war on terrorism is only a cover-up for imperialist expansion. Further,
in order to maintain its empire, the US pays off client regimes, uses state
terrorism, forces 'regime changes' via coups, assassinations, economic destabilizations
and invasions, with millions of civilian casualties. As an example, his
analysis of the Iraq war is brilliant. Its ultimate goal is imperialistic:
the creation of permanent military bases in this country in order to dominate
the Middle East.
Secondly, a loss of democracy and constitutional rights. The 'echelon'
system dwarfs George Orwell's Big Brother. After September 11, the US acts
as if it is no longer bound by international laws.
Thirdly, information becomes disinformation, mere propaganda and glorification
of war and power. Orwell's newspeak 'war is peace' became a reality with
the notion of 'preventive war'. In the Iraq war, the US troops allegedly
bombed deliberately the offices of international journalists (the trial
is still going on) showing clearly that it is not interested in free speech
(objective reporting).
Fourth, perhaps ultimately bankruptcy by financing an overstretched
unproductive army and colossal military investments. The author quotes judiciously
Robert Higgs who characterizes this military-industrial complex as 'a vast
cesspool of mismanagement, waste and criminal conduct.' On top of the tremendous
margins on military contracts, he quotes the deputy inspector general saying
'that adjustments of 4,4 trillion dollars in the Pentagon books were needed,
and that 1,1 trillion dollars were simply gone.' Mind-boggling. The author
also torpedoes the fable that the US caused the collapse of the Soviet Union
and that it won the Cold War. Ultimately the author is very pessimistic
about the state of the Union and believes that the actual situation is irreversible!
This is a brutal but necessary book. A must read for all those interested
in the future of mankind.
Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA)A Wake up call
to a Sleeping Militaristic Giant, January 25, 2011 By - See all my reviews (TOP
500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This author tells us that as a result of what in retrospect seems like
mindless unbridled capitalist greed, the U.S. has "backed" itself into becoming
an imperialist empire. With slogans of "democratic" ideology and "freedom"
as its shield, the U.S. has turned itself into little more than a brittle
wrinkled image of the ideals it has proclaimed and profess. American slogans
have become a thin pretext for unrestrained military and cultural expansion.
Instead of "freedom" and "democracy," what we have advanced is a new kind
of global racist cultural hegemony that the rest of the world has been unprepared
for, and is becoming increasingly nervous about.
Within the U.S. itself, we remain in willful and painful denial about
how our encroaching imperialism and unwanted cultural hegemony have impacted
the rest of the world. As well, we remain in chronic denial about how, domestically,
they have also transformed our county's ideals into a bastardized form of
"racist cowboy narrow-mindedness" best depicted in the egregious behavior
the author carefully chronicles about what goes on on our military bases
around the world, where American "creature comforts" take precedence over
the needs of the nations we pretend to be protecting.
Even in our own collective parochial mind, we have gone from "making
the world safe for democracy," to "fighting the evil empire," to "winning
and ending the Cold War," to a rash of unnecessary interventions from Panama,
the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Colombia, Serbia, Vietnam, to
Afghanistan and Grenada. And yet, after a century of "international gunsling,"
only after 911 have we been forced finally to look ourselves in the mirror.
And it seems that no one other than those on the radical right, who watch
the "Fox News channel," like what they see.
In the aftermath of 911, we are finally beginning to understand who we
really are as a nation: We are a global cultural and military hegemon, period.
Cultural and military dominance and hegemony is what we do. Sadly, it is
all we know. We have invented a name for it;
it is called "U.S. exceptionalism." Yet, as this author argues, exceptional
or not, and sixteen trillion dollars on military hardware later, we are
"less free" and "infinitely more insecure" today than we have ever been
in our nation's history?
As a nation, we have fought in more wars than any other nation in the
history of the world. And yet, even on the "UN index of Peace," a measure
of how unstable the nations of the world are, in 2010, the U.S. ranked not
first or second, but 85th (between Macedonia and Angola). But there are
yet other reasons why even without the UN index, there are no reasons for
us as citizens of a proud nation to be sanguine. There is something palpable
going on here that we can feel in our bones. Something is not right about
America? Even though, arguably, we won the Cold War, our warlike footing
did not change one iota for the better, but instead got measurably worse.
For instance, internally, America has become infinitely more of a police
state. In every county of the country, we now have representatives of "homeland
security," from "rent-a-cops," to PIs, to DEA agents, to CIA, DIA and other
intelligence stringers, to border guards, INS agents and IRS investigators.
Even our banks and municipal office buildings all now have metal detectors.
And did anyone forget that among the indices within the UN Peace Index are
things like the number of individuals a nation holds in its prisons and
jails, the number of political assassinations, the number of guns within
the culture, the number of murders and the overall amount of crime and violence
within the society?
On these sub-indices, guess which nation rules the roost for the Western
World? The U.S. of course. These indices alone, give a whole new meaning
to the term "U.S. exceptionalism." The U.S., the world's only self-proclaimed
democracy, truly sits alone atop the heap with the dubious distinction of
having more major political assassinations, more of its citizens in prison,
more homicides and gun violence than the rest of the Western World combined.
Yet, we continue to see ourselves as an elevated form of "law and order
democracy?" Is it unreasonable to ask: What kind of nationalistic kool-aid
are we all drinking that we refuse to see our own glaring flaws?
To ourselves we are at worse an "informal hegemon." And although we may
seem like the proverbial cultural bull in a china shop, we are actually
opening markets, guaranteeing mutual security, underwriting world stability,
promoting democracy and instituting a just humanitarian world order, right?
Yes, to ourselves, we continue to be "all things good." But the rest of
the world is tiring of all this self-promoted goodness.
Our most recent act on the international scene has been to wage a war
on terror, which effectively means that we are now fighting a war against
an idea, a concept, and against sixty countries and the religions that embraced
Jihad. This new war requires a commitment of resources and energy for the
rest of eternity.
Our current President called the Cheney/Bush act of going to war to fight
Iraq "fighting a dumb war," but he then quickly committed nearly 100k troops
to Afghanistan where, by liberal estimates, only a couple hundred al Qaeda
remain. He did so in a military arena that has
devoured armies since Alexander of Macedonia was defeated there in the 4th
century. Now, just how smart of a war is the one he is fighting?
Even worse, somehow, our democratic precepts allowed us to introduce in
the last administration, the idea of pre-emptive war. It is an idea that
all our scholars and military planners had argued against in our military
academies, forever. Yet, our leaders, Cheney and Bush, with a straight face
endorsed this cockamamie idea with a vengeance, and with it, using a package
of measures called "the Patriot Act," rolled back most of the freedoms we
claimed to cherish. As we looked on comatose,
these two cowboys with a single wave of the hand, turned America globally
into an international outlaw; and domestically into a nascent police state.
That we allowed it to happen, means that the American people
are still sleep-waking through the 21st century.
There will be a high price to pay for our continuing acquiescence to
the criminality of our leaders. A sobering read. Five stars.
Watson said: "Can I ask the prime minister would he allow Lord Leveson [who
will be leading the inquiry] access to the intelligence services as well? At
the murkier ends of this scandal there are allegations that rogue elements in
the intelligence services had very close dealings with executives at News International.
We need to get to the bottom of that."
Murdoch Goes From Party Darling to Pariah in Watershed Moment By Thomas
Penny and Robert Hutton - Jul 12, 2011 8:16 AM ET
July 11 | Bloomberg
Brad Adgate, director of research at Horizon Media Inc., talks about News
Corp.'s bid to take full control of British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc and the
probe into alleged phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch's News International. News
Corp.'s 7.8 billion-pound ($12.4 billion) bid for BSkyB faces a review by the
top U.K. competition authority that will take at least six months as the probe
widens. Adgate speaks with Mark Crumpton on Bloomberg Television's "Botttom
Line." (Source: Bloomberg)
At the News International party last month,
Rupert
Murdoch got the reception he’s used to in London, with political figures
of every stripe and from the prime minister down paying court at the Kensington
Palace event.
When he returned to the city two days ago, the 80-year-old was jostled by
camera crews and faced shouted questions. Asked if
David Cameron
was likely to speak to Murdoch during this week’s visit, an official in the
prime minister’s office struggled to answer over laughter at the idea.
Allegations last week that News Corp. staff hacked into the phones of murdered
schoolgirls and terror victims and paid police for stories prompted Murdoch
to close the 168-year-old News of the World tabloid on which his U.K. media
empire was founded. Politicians from all parties have called for his planned
purchase of
British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc (BSY) to be scrapped and some question
whether his company is fit to own a broadcasting license at all.
“The days of Rupert Murdoch as a man that people will fly halfway around
the world to see, whose phone calls get taken, are over,” said Tim Bale, professor
of politics at Sussex University and the author of “The
Conservative
Party From Thatcher to Cameron.” “All the party leaders have been distancing
themselves.”
Thatcher Backer
U.K. prime ministers have felt the need to curry favor with Murdoch since
he was allowed by
Margaret
Thatcher’s government in 1981 to add the Times and Sunday Times to his stable
of newspapers, which already included the Sun and the News of the World. He
was the only newspaper owner invited to a lunch to celebrate Thatcher’s decade
in power in 1989 and was more than once invited to spend Christmas with her
family, according to
John Campbell’s
biography of Thatcher.
(For a related story on
News Corp. (NWSA)’s market value slump, click here. To read a story on the
BSkyB review, click here.)
Cameron’s predecessor,
Gordon Brown,
also courted Murdoch and is now the victim of the latest twist of the phone-hacking
scandal. Brown today accused News Corp. newspapers of using criminals to get
stories about him whilst he was in office and said he was reduced to tears when
the Sun tabloid phoned him to say it was going to report his son Fraser’s diagnosis
of cystic fibrosis.
Brown Allegations
“The level of criminality involved, which is going to be exposed, meant that
there were links between that newspaper, and that group of newspapers, and well-known
criminals in this country,” Brown said in an interview with BBC television broadcast
today. “This is an issue and will become an issue about the abuse of political
power as well as the abuse of civil liberties.”
News International said in a statement today it is satisfied that the Sun
obtained the story from a legitimate source and pledged to look into the allegations
made by Brown.
Despite his upset over the reporting, Brown still invited Murdoch to a dinner
for historians during U.S. President
George Bush’s
last visit to the U.K. Brown’s wife, Sarah, had Murdoch’s wife, Wendi Deng,
for a “sleepover party” at their Chequers official country residence, the Telegraph
reported in 2008.
Also entertained by the Browns at Chequers was Rebekah Brooks, the former
editor of the Sun and News of the World, now chief executive officer of News
International, the publisher of Murdoch’s British papers. Cameron, whose house
in his Oxfordshire electoral district is close to Brooks’s, has followed suit,
attending a drinks party she held at Christmas.
Courted by Cameron
It was
Tony Blair who did fly halfway around the world, visiting
Australia
when he became Labour Party leader in 1995, two years before he became Prime
Minister. After the vilification Murdoch papers, especially the tabloid Sun,
had poured on his predecessor as Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, the decision was
controversial within his party.
“People would be horrified,” Blair wrote in his memoir “A Journey,” explaining
the decision. “Not to go was to say carry on and do your worst, and we knew
their worst was very bad indeed,” he wrote. “No, you sat down to sup; or not.
So we did.”
Cameron has been assiduous in courting Murdoch, hiring former News of the
World editor
Andy Coulson
as his press adviser. Coulson took the fall for the original phone-hacking scandal,
resigning in 2007 after one of his reporters was jailed for intercepting voicemails
of members of the royal household.
Coulson Connection
At the time, he insisted it had been the work of a single rogue reporter
and that he had known nothing. Even when News Corp. executives in 2009 said
James Murdoch,
Rupert’s son, had approved payments to other phone-hacking victims, both the
company and Cameron stuck to the line that the activity hadn’t been widespread.
That line broke at the start of the year, when, under a weight of lawsuits,
News International said illegal behavior had been more widespread. Shortly before
that announcement, Coulson quit his post in Cameron’s office.
Since then, the government and News Corp. have followed diverging paths,
culminating last week in Cameron insisting nothing had been proved against Coulson.
James Murdoch had put out a statement the day before saying that, during Coulson’s
time at the News of the World, “wrongdoers had turned a good newsroom bad,”
and closing the paper. Coulson was arrested and questioned on July 8.
‘We Are Afraid’
While standing by Coulson, whom he said remains a friend and has yet to be
charged or convicted, Cameron said he had been wrong to focus on “courting support”
from the press, turning a “blind eye” to claims of wrongdoing.
Tom Watson,
the Labour party lawmaker who has pursued the phone-hacking scandal for two
years, on Sept. 9 offered his fellow lawmakers an assessment of why it was being
ignored.
“In this House we are all, in our own way, scared of the Rebekah Brookses
of this world,” he said. “The barons of the media, with their red-topped assassins,
are the biggest beasts in the modern jungle. Prime Ministers quail before them,
and that is how they like it. We are afraid.”
The balance from fear to outrage shifted July 4, when the
Guardian
newspaper reported that a News of the World employee intercepted messages
left on the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
Distress Signal
Cameron was in
Afghanistan
at the time. As they prepared for a press conference with President
Hamid Karzai
in Kabul, one of Cameron’s staff spotted that the union flag behind the prime
minister was flying the wrong way up -- historically a distress signal.
It was appropriate. Aides traveling with the prime minister said the story
had stopped being something of interest only to media-watchers and opposition
politicians, and would arouse public fury. What one aide described as their
hands-off attitude to the BSkyB deal would not help them to deal with what was
to come.
Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, competes with News Corp. units
in providing financial news and information.
The latest revelations in the widening News International scandal are simply
stunning. “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” is apparently as true
now as it was in Shakespeare’s day. The idea that a news organization would
have the audacity to target a head of state a Cabinet member
and later PM over a decade, as News International papers the Sun and the Sunday
Times did with Gordon Brown, and not with the usual tools of invective and gossip,
but via the theft of personal information, raises the scandal to a whole new
level.
It’s bad enough to monitor cell phone calls. The state of cell phone security
is a disgrace, as
our Richard Smith points out. One of my clients (a media company!) refuses
to discuss deals or corporate strategy on mobile phones for that very reason.
Per the Guardian, the decade-long campaign against Brown included:
Repeatedly obtaining data from his bank account
Hacking into his accountants’ computer to get his tax fiilngs
Fooling his attorneys into providing details from his legal records
Purloining family medical records (which led to the publication of information
about Brown’s ill infant son)
Suborning a police officer to scrape national police computer records
Several issues bear noting:
There is no way to pretend this sort of lawbreaking and invasion of privacy
was not News International policy. This took place at two separate papers, the
Sun and the Sunday Times.
There is also no way to pretend that Rebekah Brooks’ fingerprints are not
all over this. From the Guardian:
In October 2006, the then editor of the Sun, Rebekah Brooks, contacted
the Browns to tell them that they had obtained details from the medical
file of their four-month-old son, Fraser, which revealed his cystic fibrosis.
This appears to have been a clear breach of the Data Protection Act,
which would allow such a disclosure only if it were in the public interest.
Friends of the Browns say the call caused them immense distress, since they
were only coming to terms with the diagnosis, which had not been confirmed.
The Sun published the story.
It seems implausible that Rupert Murdoch, who is a noted micromanager and
is famously devoted to Brooks, would not have been kept in the loop about the
efforts to obtain information about Brown.
Scotland Yard charged News International with sabotaging its inquiry into
police corruption via leaking critical information. Again from the
Guardian:
The police say the information being leaked comes from documents handed
over by NI executives and their legal team at meetings over the past few
weeks. They said it was agreed to keep the information confidential “so
that [the police] could pursue various lines of inquiry, identify those
responsible without alerting them and secure best evidence”.
All parties at the meetings agreed the information on the table was to
be kept out of the public eye until early August, when the police must hand
over all relevant information to those pursuing hacking claims against NI.
At that point, suspects will be able to see what evidence the police have
and will be able to prepare their defence accordingly.
Update: the piece de resistance: right after Scotland
Yard began its probe of the now defunct News of the World,
the paper also hacked the phones of the senior police investigators on its case.
It doesn’t get much more brazen than this. The tabloid leaked claims that one
had inflated his reimbursable expenses and was having affairs and another inappropriately
used frequent flier miles from work for personal travel. Back to the original
post.
This call by Labor MP Tom Watson for James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks to
be suspended from office and face the full force of the law based on the information
available about News International’s conduct as last week is even more urgent
now (hat tip Richard Smith):
As much as it is easy for Americans to pretend that these revelations about
the sorry state of the press are due to the powerful role Murdoch has carved
out for himself in England, as well as the scurrilousness of its tabloid press,
these extracts from a
George Monbiot comment suggest that the similarities are considerably greater
than the differences:
s. Look at the remarkable admission by the rightwing columnist Janet
Daley in this week’s Sunday Telegraph. “British political journalism is
basically a club to which politicians and journalists both belong,” she
wrote. “It is this familiarity, this intimacy, this set of shared assumptions
… which is the real corruptor of political life. The self-limiting spectrum
of what can and cannot be said … the self-reinforcing cowardice which takes
for granted that certain vested interests are too powerful to be worth confronting.
All of these things are constant dangers in the political life of any democracy.”
Most national journalists are embedded, immersed in the society, beliefs
and culture of the people they are meant to hold to account. They are fascinated
by power struggles among the elite but have little interest in the conflict
between the elite and those they dominate. They celebrate those with agency
and ignore those without….The papers cannot announce that their purpose
is to ventriloquise the concerns of multimillionaires; they must present
themselves as the voice of the people…
So the rightwing papers run endless exposures of benefit cheats, yet
say scarcely a word about the corporate tax cheats. They savage the trade
unions and excoriate the BBC. They lambast the regulations that restrain
corporate power. They school us in the extrinsic values – the worship of
power, money, image and fame – which advertisers love but which make this
a shallower, more selfish country. Most of them deceive their readers about
the causes of climate change. These are not the obsessions of working people.
They are the obsessions thrust upon them by the multimillionaires who own
these papers.
The corporate media is a gigantic astroturfing operation: a fake grassroots
crusade serving elite interests. In this respect the media companies resemble
the Tea Party movement, which claims to be a spontaneous rising of blue-collar
Americans against the elite but was founded with the help of the billionaire
Koch brothers and promoted by Murdoch’s Fox News.
Journalism’s primary purpose is to hold power to account. This purpose
has been perfectly inverted. Columnists and bloggers are employed as the
enforcers of corporate power, denouncing people who criticise its interests,
stamping on new ideas, bullying the powerless.
Monbiot suggested a Hippocratic Oath for journalists and suggested some text.
Unfortunately, having seen corporate mission statements and codes of conduct
honed in endless drafting sessions and summarily ignored once completed, I don’t
place much stock in this sort of exercise.
The fact that Aljazeera is making a mockery of what passes for Anglo-Saxon
journalism is a perverse good sign; it establishes that there is a real, substantial
audience for serious reporting. While the magnitude of the Murdoch shock may
well have a lasting, salutary effect on the press in the UK, I’m not optimistic
that any self examination or course correction will take place in America’s
propaganda-infested media.
The White House and Republican leaders may be locked in a bruising battle
over how to slash the long-term deficit, but
defense cuts seem to be off the table. This week, House lawmakers are moving
rapidly toward approving a $649 billion defense appropriation bill that would
boost baseline Pentagon spending by 3.4 percent in 2012.
Republicans and Democrats alike talk a good game when it comes to defense spending.
But when push comes to shove, they have a hard time cutting the Department of
Defense’s budget out of fear of appearing soft on national security. Outgoing
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who last week won the presidential medal freedom,
has used his bully pulpit to warn against
sharp defense cuts, as has former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
While President Obama requested even more money in his proposed budget than
what is now in the appropriations bill, he said during the current debt ceiling
negotiations that he would like to see $400 billion in cuts over the next decade.
However, that’s not in the cards this week.
In addition to a 1.6 percent pay increase for service personnel, the fine
print of the bill includes dozens of projects favored by individual legislators
whose districts benefit from
Pentagon spending. The legislation passed the House Appropriations Committee
in mid-June with near unanimous bi-partisan support.
Despite a planned troop drawdown in Afghanistan, the size of the military
– 1.4 million men and women in uniform and an estimated 800,000 civilian personnel
– will remain essentially unchanged next year, according to the legislation.
There is also a major increase in defense spending on medical research, much
of it earmarked for cancer cure investigations unrelated to health problems
that are specific to the military.
“The Pentagon budget is still continuing to go up while every other agency
of the federal government is going down,” said Laura Peterson, who follows the
defense budget for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington watchdog group.
“National security exceptionalism is still at work.”
Next year’s proposed increase, funded entirely by the planned reduction in
war spending in Afghanistan and Iraq, has drawn fire from the fringes of
both political parties. In recent weeks, a handful of Tea Party-backed
Republicans on the right have joined liberals in Congress, who traditionally
back curbs on military spending, in opposing the bill.
Rep. Alcee Hastings, a Democrat from Florida, gave voice to liberal frustrations
last month when the House voted to take up the appropriations legislation after
the July 4th recess. “When Belle Glade, Florida, in the congressional district
that I serve, comes looking for less than $1 million to fix their infrastructure
and provide jobs for their local residents, the Republican majority has a whole
long list of reasons of why we can’t afford it,” he said. “And yet today, I
see $5 billion for two submarines, $2 billion for one destroyer, and $6 billion
for 32 fighter jets.”
Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium): An obsessive military agenda,
January 23, 2010
As in his other books, F. William Engdahl exposes vital aspects of the
world today and, in the first place, the battle for total control of our
planet and the space around it.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, important segments of the US establishment
panicked as their power base (national security and the Cold War) fell apart:
how to justify the huge arms spending and a massive intelligence apparatus
without a direct enemy? The solution for them was to replace the Cold War
by a geopolitical agenda: Full Spectrum Dominance.
Crucial aspects of this agenda are control of the Eurasian Heartland,
the encircling of Russia and control of China's lifelines (oil tanker traffic).
With the help of their diabolical media machine, this agenda was sold to
the public under the veil of colonial liberation, democracy and free markets,
and partly realized by false flag operations. A major aspect of this agenda
is also Nuclear Primacy (First Strike).
As V. Putin stated: `today almost uncontained hyper use of military force
in international relations is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent
conflicts.' Adds Russian general L. Ivashov: `terrorism is simply a new
type of war in order to install a unipolar world, a pretext to establish
the rule of a world elite.'
According to Z. Brzezinski, those who control Eurasia control Africa,
the Middle East and global oil and gas flows (the economic artery system
of the world). The Balkan, Kossovo and Afghanistan wars, as well as the
installation of military bases in the `Stans' were (are) major pieces in
an encircling network of Russia. The Yukos - Khodorkovsky affair was a battle
for the control of Russian oil and gas (Yukos would have been partly sold
to foreign private interests). The wars in Africa (Congo, Darfur) as well
as the Myanmar issue (control of the coastline of the Strait of Malacca,
good for 85 % of Chinese oil tanker traffic) are indirect confrontations
with China and its vital economic interests.
Ultimately, F. William Engdahl poses the cardinal question: can the US
survive this obsessive and costly military agenda?
This book is a must read for all those who want to understand the world
we live in.
"For defense spending, the agreement limits proposed increases in spending,
with the Pentagon getting $513 billion in fiscal 2011, up from $508 billion
the prior year. But that is less than what both the GOP and President Barack
Obama wanted."
No one is serious about anything in DC!!
That figure does not include the $130B or so for the wars, but does not
alter the commitment of $1.6T for wasteful procurements.
Fleeced!
calmo:
Sure to bring anne in ilsm...I have not greased my mouse wheel yet for
those column upon columns, you?
It is my impression that there is no number ($kaboodles) that carries
any weight of authority (like calmo weighs 236 lbs) wrt Defense spending,
because that would mean the terrorists have won.
And the MIC has won.
Ok, time to rezero the bathroom scales
ilsm:
c'mo,
I used to be in the business of figuring out how to operate and sustain
those huge thingies GAO don't like how they are going.
Take the R&D and Procurement costs and multiply by 2 or 3 times over
twenty years trying to get them thingies that don't pass tests to work in
the hands of Snuffy Smith, GI.
The numbers are a bow wave or US could save now.
No difference in terms of marginal utility of the spending can't get
much from turnips raised in defense land.
And GAO is being optimistic.
Numbers..........
Then about 20 years after firing Mac Arthur Harry Truman admitted he
did not only fire him for being a 'dumb SOB, that accounts for most generals.......'
What have they done with President Obama? What happened to the inspirational
figure his supporters thought they elected? Who is this bland, timid guy
who doesn’t seem to stand for anything in particular?
-- Paul Krugman
[This bland, timid President we elected is busily waging war in Afghanistan
and Pakistan and Libya, militarily occupying Afghanistan and repeatedly
trying to convince the Iraqi government that we should be allowed to continue
to occupy Iraq. Oh, there are the bombings of and military operations in
Yemen....]
What we spend in Afghanistan, Iraq, and in other places is drowning our
own nation's economy. Nuclear power is also a drain and a liability. We
do not have a creative energy policy. Currently, neighborhood renewable
energy stations are being built and servicing large areas. This is the a
solution. localized Green energy stations using what works in those small
regions: solar, wind, geothermal, mixed with natural gas is a solution.
Dr. Stiglitz knows what he is talking about. Taxing those who have been
getting rich as a result of the economic collapse. Like he says, these wealth
creators have not created jobs, nor improved the economy. In spite of their
wealth accumulations, they pay less tax than working people. It is all disgusting.
AMY GOODMAN: Joe Stiglitz...let’s end on the issue of war. You wrote
with Linda Bilmes the book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost
of the Iraq Conflict. That’s not talking about Afghanistan, what, $2 billion
a week, the longest ongoing conflict in U.S. history. What about the cost
of this?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: It’s enormous. And since we wrote that book, we did—new
numbers came in, and things are worse than we said.
The disability rates are higher. The cost of
caring for the disabled are higher. Almost one out of two people coming
back from Iraq and Afghanistan are disabled. This is an unfunded liability
of—we calculate now to be almost a trillion dollars, over $900 billion.
So, one of the big ways of reducing our deficit is a—is cut back some expenditures....
Hollywood is for entertainment and as such does often not reflect reality.
You should be aware of that when you watch those movies. The problem is
that the ‘real media’, i.e. those that should be more grounded in the real
world are basically running the same storyline that Hollywood does. So it’s
no surprise that people start taking fiction for reality. As Noam Chomsky
showed in his Manufacturing Consent, this doesn’t happen by coincidence.
Charles Frith:
The Hollywood rot is more pernicious than just war movies. But I’ve no
inclination to explain that because I think that Yves would be well placed
to ignore economics given its impending doom and like this post blog the
content that reflects what I call good judgement on how the string pullers
pull strings.
Chris Hedges:
“… You react as a child, which is to call for a saviour, a demagogue,
someone who promises moral renewal …”. You vote for Obama.
Good choice, Yves! This is one of Bishara’s best, and ever so appropriate,
here, now.
jake chase
7:42 am The love affair between Hollywood and the war machine began in 1942.
These days, the moguls are selling anti-terrorism twenty-four seven. One
wonders what they would use for material without it. Of course, television
is for idiots and movies are for twelve year olds, so stop watching and
read a good book if you can find one.
You can get some perspective on all this from Thucydides.
DownSouth
8:05 am For our geniuses-in-charge, enhanced truth-telling never plays a
part in any proposed solution to this losing battle for the hearts and minds
of the world’s denizens, and especially those of the United States. Instead,
it’s full steam ahead in building a bigger and better propaganda machine.
Of course when the truth is stacked against one, and to such a signigicant
degree, what other option remains? Nevertheless, it seems like U.S. politicians
place a great deal of faith in the power of propaganda—-in telling bigger
and bigger, and increasingly more outrageous, lies. They seem to think there
is no limit to their ability to hoodwink the people.
But the obstacles the professional liars must overcome are growing. As
this article (link furnished by Michael H) opines:
[W]hat would the state-subsidized propagandists be able to boast about?
Predator raids in Afghanistan? Guantanamo? Thirty million on part-time work
or jobless in the Homeland? America is not the sell it once was, when the
economic growth rate was headed up and capitalism seemed capable of delivering
on its promises.
Max424
8:55 am YS: “I must confess I enjoyed the action footage.”
Me too. I especially like when our gunships move in and spray the Mogadishu
rooftops with their 30 mm cannons. With a rate of fire at 4 thousand rounds
per minute, and tasked with dispatching two or three dozen evil-doers ineffectively
firing their AK 47 pea shooters, the 30 mm Gatling is a lock to get em all.
And it does. That scene is the climax of the movie, in my opinion. The
remaining hour is just an overlong denouement.
Was there a greater genius than Dr. R. J. Gatling? He takes his patented
mechanical seed planter and transforms it into one the great weapon systems
of all-time. So simple in the beginning the deadly machine could be hand
cranked. And it is still simple. The modern 30 mm cannon shares the exact
same attributes as the 19th century Gatling machine, it just not hand cranked
anymore, has bigger rounds (much, much bigger) and higher rate of fire (much,
much higher).
Former General Colonel Custer had an opportunity to take three Gatling’s
with him when he went out — on his ill-fated adventure — to face the Lakota
Sioux. He refused them. He thought they were, somehow, ignoble, and a tad
unfair.
Bad decision Georgy.
Sufferin' Succotash
9:31 am Since when has the Dream Factory ever gotten its history right?
From gross distortions of the Reconstruction era (Birth of a Nation) to
exaggerating the importance of the 54th Massachusetts in the Civil War(Glory)Hollywood
hasn’t been able to deal accurately with US history, let alone any other
brand of history. Interestingly, British film-makers are just as bad, though
their distortions of the historical record tend to be more subtle and understated.
For a few decades starting in the late 1940s television news held out the
tantalizing prospect of being a source of accurate contemporary history.
But that prospect pretty much evaporated with the advent of cable news networks
and the resulting race to the bottom of journalistic quality. The problem
was that back in the day the major network news divisions were always money
losers. Even a network chief like CBS’ Bill Paley–who believed in maintaining
a strong news division for prestige purposes–had to sacrifice Ed Murrow
and Don Hewitt’s “See It Now” on the altar of Higher Ratings. Minor correction
for Max424: Custer didn’t take the Gatlings out of chivalry, but because
he was afraid they would slow him down. In any case, it’s hard to see how
they would have made any difference as far as Custer’s command was concerned,
though Reno would have found them useful when he was defending his hilltops.
DownSouth:
In order to understand what it is in human nature that makes war propaganda—-the
appeals to violence, racism, nationalism, loot and plunder, etc.—-so beguiling,
there’s probably not a better book than Peter Turchin’s War and Peace and
War.
In order to understand the fall of the “war system,” and the concomitant
rise of the alternatives—-people’s war and nonviolence—-there’s no better
book than Jonathan Schell’s The Unconquerable World.
And in order to understand the nuts and bolts of the resurrection of
the “war system” in the United States after the Viet Nam War, which should
have been the death of it, there’s no better books than Andrew Bacevich’s
The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War and its sequel,
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.
According to Bacevich, the military profession was “at bay” following
the Viet Nam war. However, militarism was unleashed again upon the American
people by a confluence of forces:
1) The neoconservative movement (“Chapter Three: Left, Right, Left”)
2) Hollywood and Ronald Reagan (“Chapter Four: California Dreaming”) 3)
Right-wing evangelical Christians (“Chapter Five: Onward”) 4) The military
industry (“Chapter Six: War Club”) 5) Realpolitik (“Chapter Seven: Blood
for Oil”) 6) The fact that the “American people have persuaded themselves
that their best prospect for safety and salvation lies with the sword” (“Chapter
Eight: Common Defense”)
Jack Rip:
We got used to the propaganda arm of the rich masquerading as network
news. Al Jazeera is a news organization period. It has some biases but it
is mostly a good new TV. Although it is an Arab network, it will interview
Israeli politicians when appropriate. Could you imagine Al Qaida spokesperson
appearing on ABC news?
Even our best papers have become, at least partially, arms of the ruling
class. The best of them, the NY Times and in particular the WaPo, have long
bouts of ruling class drunkenness.
The protests in Wisconsin have been a great manifestation of a major
event with social, political and financial ramification that the TV networks
have practically ignored and played a 3rd banana in the papers.
I just came upon
The Pentagon Labyrinth Its a very readable, very informative collection
of essays about national defense in the United States. The essays are written
by ex-defense personnel (some of whom were very influential) and journalists
who cover the military, and to top it off, its free!!!!
From the book's blurbage:
The Pentagon Labyrinth aims to help both newcomers and seasoned observers
learn how to grapple with the problems of national defense. Intended for
readers who are frustrated with the superficial nature of the debate on
national security, this handbook takes advantage of the insights of ten
unique professionals, each with decades of experience in the armed services,
the Pentagon bureaucracy, Congress, the intelligence community, military
history, journalism and other disciplines. The short but provocative essays
will help you to:
-identify the decay—moral, mental and physical—in America’s defenses,
-understand the various “tribes” that run bureaucratic life in the
Pentagon,
-appreciate what too many defense journalists are not doing, but
should,
-conduct first rate national security oversight instead of second
rate theater,
-separate careerists from ethical professionals in senior military
and civilian ranks,
-learn to critique strategies, distinguishing the useful from the
agenda-driven,
-recognize the pervasive influence of money in defense decision-making,
-unravel the budget games the Pentagon and Congress love to play,
-understand how to sort good weapons from bad—and avoid high cost
failures, and reform the failed defense procurement system without changing
a single law.
The handbook ends with lists of contacts, readings and Web sites carefully
selected to facilitate further understanding of the above, and more.
This new publication from the Center for Defense Information (CDI) is
being made available for download through our Web site at the following
links below. Included are the full e-book, and all individual sections and
essays in PDF format.
Its a quick read (vital for me right now!!), and frankly, there isn't much
in here that's controversial though its clear several of the writers relish
being gadflies. The book is chock full of facts, and it provides a lot of great
food for thought about military issues.
In defense circles, "cutting" the Pentagon budget has once again become a
topic of conversation. Americans should not confuse that talk with reality.
Any cuts exacted will at most reduce the rate of growth. The essential facts
remain: U.S. military outlays today equal that of every other nation on the
planet combined, a situation without precedent in modern history.
The Pentagon presently spends more in constant dollars than it did at any
time during the Cold War – this despite the absence of anything remotely approximating
what national security experts like to call a "peer competitor." Evil Empire?
It exists only in the fevered imaginations of those who quiver at the prospect
of China adding a rust-bucket Russian aircraft carrier to its fleet or who take
seriously the ravings of radical Islamists promising from deep inside their
caves to unite the Umma in a new caliphate.
What are Americans getting for their money? Sadly, not much. Despite extraordinary
expenditures (not to mention exertions and sacrifices by US forces), the return
on investment is, to be generous, unimpressive. The chief lesson to emerge from
the battlefields of the post-9/11 era is this: the Pentagon possesses next to
no ability to translate "military supremacy" into meaningful victory.
Washington knows how to start wars and how to prolong them, but is clueless
when it comes to ending them. Iraq, the latest addition to the roster of America's
forgotten wars, stands as exhibit A. Each bomb that blows up in Baghdad or some
other Iraqi city, splattering blood all over the streets, testifies to the manifest
absurdity of judging "the surge" as the epic feat of arms celebrated by the
Petraeus lobby.
The problems are strategic as well as operational. Old Cold War-era expectations
that projecting US power will enhance American clout and standing no longer
apply, especially in the Islamic world. There, American military activities
are instead fostering instability and inciting anti-Americanism. For Exhibit
B, see the deepening morass that Washington refers to as AfPak or the Afghanistan-Pakistan
theater of operations.
Add to that the mountain of evidence showing that Pentagon, Inc. is a miserably
managed enterprise: hide-bound, bloated, slow-moving, and prone to wasting resources
on a prodigious scale—nowhere more so than in weapons procurement and the outsourcing
of previously military functions to "contractors." When it comes to national
security, effectiveness (what works) should rightly take precedence over
efficiency (at what cost?) as the overriding measure of merit. Yet beyond
a certain level, inefficiency undermines effectiveness, with the Pentagon stubbornly
and habitually exceeding that level. By comparison, Detroit's much-maligned
Big Three offer models of well-run enterprises.
Impregnable Defenses
All of this takes place against the backdrop of mounting problems at home:
stubbornly high unemployment, trillion-dollar federal deficits, massive and
mounting debt, and domestic needs like education, infrastructure, and employment
crying out for attention.
Yet the defense budget—a misnomer since for Pentagon, Inc. defense per se
figures as an afterthought—remains a sacred cow. Why is that?
The answer lies first in understanding the defenses arrayed around that cow
to ensure that it remains untouched and untouchable. Exemplifying what the military
likes to call a "defense in depth," that protective shield consists of four
distinct but mutually supporting layers.
Institutional Self-Interest: Victory in World War
II produced not peace, but an atmosphere of permanent national security crisis.
As never before in US history, threats to the nation's existence seemed omnipresent,
an attitude first born in the late 1940s that still persists today. In Washington,
fear – partly genuine, partly contrived – triggered a powerful response.
One result was the emergence of the national security state, an array of
institutions that depended on (and therefore strove to perpetuate) this atmosphere
of crisis to justify their existence, status, prerogatives, and budgetary claims.
In addition, a permanent arms industry arose, which soon became a major source
of jobs and corporate profits. Politicians of both parties were quick to identify
the advantages of aligning with this
"military-industrial complex," as President Eisenhower described it.
Allied with (and feeding off of) this vast apparatus that transformed tax
dollars into appropriations, corporate profits, campaign contributions, and
votes was an intellectual axis of sorts – government-supported laboratories,
university research institutes, publications, think tanks, and lobbying firms
(many staffed by former or would-be senior officials) – devoted to identifying
(or conjuring up) ostensible national security challenges and alarms, always
assumed to be serious and getting worse, and then devising responses to them.
The upshot: within Washington, the voices carrying weight in any national
security "debate" all share a predisposition for sustaining very high levels
of military spending for reasons having increasingly little to do with the well-being
of the country.
Strategic Inertia: In a 1948 State Department document,
diplomat George F. Kennan offered this observation: "We have about 50 percent
of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population." The challenge
facing American policymakers, he continued, was "to devise a pattern of relationships
that will permit us to maintain this disparity." Here we have a description
of American purposes that is far more candid than all of the rhetoric about
promoting freedom and democracy, seeking world peace, or exercising global leadership.
The end of World War II found the United States in a spectacularly privileged
position. Not for nothing do Americans remember the immediate postwar era as
a Golden Age of middle-class prosperity. Policymakers since Kennan's time have
sought to preserve that globally privileged position. The effort has been a
largely futile one.
By 1950 at the latest, those policymakers (with Kennan by then a notable
dissenter) had concluded that the possession and deployment of military power
held the key to preserving America's exalted status. The presence of US forces
abroad and a demonstrated willingness to intervene, whether overtly or covertly,
just about anywhere on the planet would promote stability, ensure US access
to markets and resources, and generally serve to enhance the country's influence
in the eyes of friend and foe alike – this was the idea, at least.
In postwar Europe and postwar Japan, this formula achieved considerable success.
Elsewhere – notably in Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, and (especially after
1980) in the so-called Greater Middle East – it either produced mixed results
or failed catastrophically. Certainly, the events of the post-9/11 era provide
little reason to believe that this presence/power-projection paradigm will provide
an antidote to the threat posed by violent anti-Western jihadism. If
anything, adherence to it is exacerbating the problem by creating ever greater
anti-American animus.
One might think that the manifest shortcomings of the presence/power-projection
approach – trillions expended in Iraq for what? – might stimulate present-day
Washington to pose some first-order questions about basic US national security
strategy. A certain amount of introspection would seem to be called for. Could,
for example, the effort to sustain what remains of America's privileged status
benefit from another approach?
Yet there are few indications that our political leaders, the senior-most
echelons of the officer corps, or those who shape opinion outside of government
are capable of seriously entertaining any such debate. Whether through ignorance,
arrogance, or a lack of imagination, the pre-existing strategic paradigm stubbornly
persists; so, too, as if by default do the high levels of military spending
that the strategy entails.
Cultural Dissonance: The rise of the Tea Party movement
should disabuse any American of the thought that the cleavages produced by the
"culture wars" have healed. The cultural upheaval touched off by the 1960s and
centered on Vietnam remains unfinished business in this country.
Among other things, the sixties destroyed an American consensus, forged during
World War II, about the meaning of patriotism. During the so-called Good War,
love of country implied, even required, deference to the state, shown most clearly
in the willingness of individuals to accept the government's authority to mandate
military service. GI's, the vast majority of them draftees, were the embodiment
of American patriotism, risking life and limb to defend the country.
The GI of World War II had been an American Everyman. Those soldiers both
represented and reflected the values of the nation from which they came (a perception
affirmed by the ironic fact that the military adhered to prevailing standards
of racial segregation). It was "our army" because that army was "us."
With Vietnam, things became more complicated. The war's supporters argued
that the World War II tradition still applied: patriotism required deference
to the commands of the state. Opponents of the war, especially those facing
the prospect of conscription, insisted otherwise. They revived the distinction,
formulated a generation earlier by the radical journalist Randolph Bourne, that
distinguished between the country and the state. Real patriots, the ones who
most truly loved their country, were those who opposed state policies they regarded
as misguided, illegal, or immoral.
In many respects, the soldiers who fought the Vietnam War found themselves
caught uncomfortably in the center of this dispute. Was the soldier who died
in Vietnam a martyr, a tragic figure, or a sap? Who deserved greater admiration:
the soldier who fought bravely and uncomplainingly or the one who served and
then turned against the war? Or was the war resister – the one who never served
at all – the real hero?
War's end left these matters disconcertingly unresolved. President Richard
Nixon's 1971 decision to kill the draft in favor of an All-Volunteer Force,
predicated on the notion that the country might be better served with a military
that was no longer "us," only complicated things further. So, too, did the trends
in American politics where bona fide war heroes (George H.W. Bush, Bob
Dole, John Kerry, and John McCain) routinely lost to opponents whose military
credentials were non-existent or exceedingly slight (Bill Clinton, George W.
Bush, and Barack Obama), yet who demonstrated once in office a remarkable propensity
for expending American blood (none belonging to members of their own families)
in places like Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It was all more than a little
unseemly.
Patriotism, once a simple concept, had become both confusing and contentious.
What obligations, if any, did patriotism impose? And if the answer was none
– the option Americans seemed increasingly to prefer – then was patriotism itself
still a viable proposition?
Wanting to answer that question in the affirmative – to distract attention
from the fact that patriotism had become little more than an excuse for fireworks
displays and taking the occasional day off from work – people and politicians
alike found a way to do so by exalting those Americans actually choosing to
serve in uniform. The thinking went this way: soldiers offer living proof that
America is a place still worth dying for, that patriotism (at least in some
quarters) remains alive and well; by common consent, therefore, soldiers are
the nation's "best," committed to "something bigger than self" in a land otherwise
increasingly absorbed in pursuing a material and narcissistic definition of
self-fulfillment.
In effect, soldiers offer much-needed assurance that old-fashioned values
still survive, even if confined to a small and unrepresentative segment of American
society. Rather than Everyman, today's warrior has ascended to the status of
icon, deemed morally superior to the nation for which he or she fights, the
repository of virtues that prop up, however precariously, the nation's increasingly
sketchy claim to singularity.
Politically, therefore, "supporting the troops" has become a categorical
imperative across the political spectrum. In theory, such support might find
expression in a determination to protect those troops from abuse, and so translate
into wariness about committing soldiers to unnecessary or unnecessarily costly
wars. In practice, however, "supporting the troops" has found expression in
an insistence upon providing the Pentagon with open-ended drawing rights on
the nation's treasury, thereby creating massive barriers to any proposal to
affect more than symbolic reductions in military spending.
Misremembered History: The duopoly of American politics
no longer allows for a principled anti-interventionist position. Both parties
are war parties. They differ mainly in the rationale they devise to argue for
interventionism. The Republicans tout liberty; the Democrats emphasize human
rights. The results tend to be the same: a penchant for activism that sustains
a never-ending demand for high levels of military outlays.
American politics once nourished a lively anti-interventionist tradition.
Leading proponents included luminaries such as George Washington and John Quincy
Adams. That tradition found its basis not in principled pacifism, a position
that has never attracted widespread support in this country, but in pragmatic
realism. What happened to that realist tradition? Simply put, World War II killed
it – or at least discredited it. In the intense and divisive debate that occurred
in 1939-1941, the anti-interventionists lost, their cause thereafter tarred
with the label "isolationism."
The passage of time has transformed World War II from a massive tragedy into
a morality tale, one that casts opponents of intervention as blackguards. Whether
explicitly or implicitly, the debate over how the United States should respond
to some ostensible threat – Iraq in 2003, Iran today – replays the debate finally
ended by the events of December 7, 1941. To express skepticism about the necessity
and prudence of using military power is to invite the charge of being an appeaser
or an isolationist. Few politicians or individuals aspiring to power will risk
the consequences of being tagged with that label.
In this sense, American politics remains stuck in the 1930s – always discovering
a new Hitler, always privileging Churchillian rhetoric – even though the circumstances
in which we live today bear scant resemblance to that earlier time. There was
only one Hitler and he's long dead. As for Churchill, his achievements and legacy
are far more mixed than his battalions of defenders are willing to acknowledge.
And if any one figure deserves particular credit for demolishing Hitler's Reich
and winning World War II, it's Josef Stalin, a dictator as vile and murderous
as Hitler himself.
Until Americans accept these facts, until they come to a more nuanced view
of World War II that takes fully into account the political and moral implications
of the US alliance with the Soviet Union and the US campaign of obliteration
bombing directed against Germany and Japan, the mythic version of "the Good
War" will continue to provide glib justifications for continuing to dodge that
perennial question: How much is enough?
Like concentric security barriers arrayed around the Pentagon, these four
factors – institutional self-interest, strategic inertia, cultural dissonance,
and misremembered history – insulate the military budget from serious scrutiny.
For advocates of a militarized approach to policy, they provide invaluable assets,
to be defended at all costs.
Filesoof:
Couldn't have said it better. One observation though. If you have a military
service consisting of enlisted people, then one can speak of an "army of
us". Now that the military are volunteers, that doesn't apply anymore. You're
not fighting for your country, period. No, you're fighting for your country
and for your paycheck. That makes a huge difference. I think that if the
military of the US still consisted of enlisted people, there would be much
less support for all the wars being waged, and for all the money being spent.
@Brandon: the article in my opinion exactly states why the US military spendings
won't go down, mostly on the first page. The illusion of 'enemies everywhere'
combined with the still persistent fact that US wealth is still way higher
than anywhere else in the world, will prevent any president or congress
from even attempting to lower the budget, especially with the entanglement
of military driven companies.
Worker201:
The US military is so much more than just a force that we ship overseas
to secure resources and spread the word of democracy. It's also one of our
largest employment agencies, a major booster of public universities, a giant
training academy, and a huge leg up for equipment contractors (who are some
of the biggest businesses in the country). Everyone stateside benefits in
some way, whether it's base dollars, manufacturing dollars, or just fewer
kids in the streets. The only ones who lose are the poor bastards overseas.
And we're usually pretty good at pretending that they aren't our problem.
Think Critically:
The contributions you've listed (employment, booster of universities,
training, etc) aren't military benefits at all; they're tax benefits. Our
tax dollars pay for these things, byproducts of an enormous military-industrial
complex. Instead of wasting hundreds of billions a year on military spending,
through which some of that money trickles on to constructive purposes, those
funds could directly be spent on education, public works projects, and job
training.
As far as "the only ones who lose are the poor bastards overseas", tell
that to grieving families as they lay to rest their loved ones lost in pointless
wars. Tell that to young men with catastrophic brain injuries, young men
maimed at 20 looking at another 50+ years without the use of their limbs.
"While I do not entirely agree with your scathing judgment of GW, this is brilliant
satire! " I wonder who the real author is... Actually the whole article and comments
are really worth reading in full !
01/20/2011
loup garou:
----> Little Georgie’s Blog
I’m against all war. Every war ever fought has been the result of “false
flag“ attacks. No nation in history has ever actually attacked another nation,
except of course the U.S.A. Because I said so in my blog. (See this.) Also, war costs a lot of money, which would be better
spent on stuff like “Cash-for-golf carts” programs and more frisbees for
prison inmates.
I’m a “Truther”, and we “Truthers” have a monopoly on the truth. Because
I said so. (See here.) And to prove it, I will use
any flimsy crap -- printed or spoken in any venue by any dubious entity
-- if it fits the pre-ordained template of my open mind. And if you disagree,
it’s because you’re closed-minded or brainwashed or a CIA plant or in denial
or something. (See this and that.)
Also, you should realize that I’m telling the truth because all of my
sources are either “prominent”, or “legendary“, or “leading“, or “noted”,
or “experts” in their respective fields. Because I always say so in my blog.
(See here, there, and
everywhere.)
The U.S.A., and especially Bush/Cheney, are evil. Corporations are evil
too, because they‘re always making a mess of the environment and stuff.
Intentionally. Because all they care about is making profits by screwing
people. And because they hate people and the Earth. All other entities are
OK; or, at least, less evil than corporations and George Bush and Dick Cheney,
whose real name is “Dick Planet Raper Cheney The Master Of Torture.”
The financial world is full of crooks (duh) and the economy can’t recover
until they are all in jail being savagely sodomized by a very large, heavily
tattooed inmate named “Big Hector“. If I keep repeating this notion in my
blog -- and if I hold my breath until my face turns red -- this fantasy
will magically come to pass. Then I’ll be almost happy; but not quite, because
I know at least one of them will get away scot-free without being sodomized
by Big Hector. And because it’s unlikely that I would get any sodomy video
footage to link to. (Not here.)
The “left/right paradigm” is obsolete. There is no more “left” or “right“.
Because I said so. (See this and that
and there.) So take that, you right-wing scum. However,
my usual “sources” (like the Guardian, New York Times, Huffington Post,
Daily Kos, FireDogLake, Salon, Der Spiegel, The Nation, Mother Jones, NPR,
Bill Moyers, Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich, Michael Moore, MSNBC, Keith
Olbermann, The Libtard Gazette, The Hammer and Sickle Herald, and on and
on and on…) are as yet oblivious to this new non-ideological reality. Probably
because they haven’t read my blog, in which I said so. (See this
and that and the otherthing again.) Anyway, whatever I copy-and-paste
from these unbiased, objective sources is absolute gospel, because they
have no agenda except the truth, just like me.
Furthermore, I agree with my fellow liberals and lefties that there are
no such things as liberals and lefties.
As you can see, my name is “George Washington“, not “George Soros”; even
though all the sources where I camp out are media organs for Nazi collaborator
George Soros. That’s just a coincidence you should disregard. Because I
say so. (See here.) Therefore, I am not a KGB/FSB
agent, even though I might as well be.
It is also just a coincidence that America-haters, Marxists, “Truthers”,
“Birthers”, Holocaust deniers, Stalin apologists, anti-Semites, Christian
haters, racists and other bigots, paranoid schizophrenics, illiterates,
frauds, plagiarists, liars and drug dealers… are drawn to me like buzzards
on a gut wagon. This has nothing to do with me. It’s not my fault that my
fans are so high-class. They read my blog so they can learn from me, because
I’m so much smarter and better informed than they are. If they didn’t have
me, just think how wretched they would be! (See somewhere.)
Because I have the mind of a child, I can’t repeat myself often enough.
Because I have the mind of a child, I can’t repeat myself often enough.
Because I have the mind of a child, I can’t repeat myself often enough.
Because I have the mind of a child, I can’t repeat myself often enough…
(See this and that.)
Do svidaniya, Georgie One Note
Dionysus:
While I do not entirely agree with your scathing judgment of GW, this
is brilliant satire!
Historians may well look back on this period, say, from 1960 on, as the "Selfish
Era" - a time when individualism and materialism steadily took precedence over
social responsibility. (To be fair, in the period from 1960 to 1980, the deterioration
was slow, and the social contract dating back to the mid-1930s was more or less
intact.) Personal debt grew slowly at first but steadily accelerated, even though
it can be easily demonstrated that consumers collectively are better off saving
to buy and that the only beneficiary of a heavy debt society is the financial
industry, whose growth throughout this period was massive, multiplying its share
of a growing pie by a remarkable 2.2 times…
The financial industry, with its incestuous relationships
with government agencies, runs a close second to the energy industry. In the last 10 years or so, their machine, led by the famously failed
economic consultant Alan Greenspan – one of the few businessmen ever to be laughed
out of business – seemed perhaps the most effective. It lacks, though, the multi-decadal
attitude-changing propaganda of the oil industry. Still, in finance they had
the "regulators", deregulating up a storm, to the enormous profit of their industry.
Even with the biggest-ever financial fiasco, entirely brought on by the collective
incompetence they produced "they" being the financial regulators and the financial
industry leaders working together in some strange, would-be symbiotic relationship),
reform is still difficult. Even with everyone hating them, the financial industry
comes out smelling like a rose with less competition, profits higher than ever,
and not just too big to fail, but bigger still.
Other industries, to be sure, are in there swinging: insurance and health
care come to mind, but they seem like pikers in comparison. No, it's energy
and finance in coequal first place, military-related companies an honorable
third, and the rest of the field not even in contention. And now, adding
the icing to the corporate cake, we have the Supreme Court. Formerly the jewel
in the American Crown, they have managed to find five Justices capable of making
Eisenhower's worst nightmare come true. They have put the seal of approval on
corporate domination of politics, and done so in a way that can be kept secret.
The swing-vote Senator can now be sand-bagged by a vicious advertising program
on television, financed by unknown parties, and approved by no stockholders
at all!
All in all it appears that Eisenhower’s worst fears have been realized and
his remarkable and unique warnings given for naught. From now on, we should
tread more carefully. Honoring President Eisenhower’s unique warnings, we should
perhaps not take this 50-year slide lying down. Squawking loudly seems preferable.
Paul Bogdanich:
The military problem is but one head of a two headed beast with the other
head being the banking system. You can also find ample warnings about takeovers
by the banks in the founding literature. In Eisenhower's day the banks were
not a problem as bankers were still deposit takers under the Rossevelt era
reforms and "investment banking" was disctinct from "commercial banking."
Not so anymore. Now they are risk takers and the best and the brightest
and all other forms of hogwash.
Captain Queeg:
There aren't 100 million people in or associated with the military or
defense contractors; 100 million is how many voters it will take to keep
a ridiculously bloated military budget in place once enough people start
going without daily needs (see Gasoline, Food, Medicine, Jobs)(see also
Roman Empire). In the short run you may be right (see American Idol)(also
see Campaign Contributions to House and Senate Members by Defense Contractors),
but when the money to pay for the defense budget is substantially borrowed
from China, in the long run, it's probably unsustainable (see Soviet Union).
And why, really, do we need huge standing armies, bases, and equipment stockpiles
when we we have submarines roaming the planet right now that pack enough
gigatonnage to turn an aggressor nation into a parking lot (see Dirty Glass).
Maybe you come from some hillbilly state where the career choices are
limited (see Farmer/Rancher, Military, Meth Cook), but the "vast majority"
that you talk about does not exist.
Three Cheers for Ike AND Jeremy Grantham (see "Night of the Living Fed").
Where are the patriots in this country?
palmereldritch:
Things have evolved (or more properly devolved) since Eisenhower's time
enough so that the MIC has agglomerated in Borg hive fashion control over
the spheres of banking (PE), media (e.g. GE) and logistics and accordingly
would probably be more accurately described now as McBIG
This is growth that is consistent with making the US military a primary
weapons platform (along with China) for pre-meditated Globalist neofeudal
consolidation.
Dick Buttkiss
Lew Rockwell would beg to differ with your assessment, GW, and I can't say
as I blame him:
Eisenhower’s farewell speech
was a long and nearly hysterical argument for the
Cold War. He presented it as more than a military policy against
Russia, but rather as a grand metaphysical struggle that should take over
our minds and souls, as bizarre as that must sound to the current generation.
His words were Wilsonian, even messianic. The job of U.S. military
policy is to “foster progress in human achievement” and enhance “dignity
and integrity” the world over. That’s a rather expansive role for government
by any standard. But he went further. An enemy stands in the way of achieving
this dream, and this enemy is “global in scope, atheistic in character,
ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method.” This great struggle “commands
our whole attention, absorbs our very beings.”
Because some crusty apparatchiks are imposing
every manner of economic control over Russia and a few satellites, U.S.
foreign policy must absorb the whole of our beings? So much for limited
government.
His "Defense Highways" program alone is enough to condemn him for his
devotion to military-industrialism, what with its destruction of the nation's
national passenger rail system and the freeway free-for-all that would literally
pave the way for WalMart and everything else that America's subsidized "love
affair with the automobile" has wrought.
I've always found it rather haunting to watch old footage of my grandfather,
Dwight Eisenhower, giving his televised farewell address to the nation on Jan.
17, 1961. The 50-year-old film all but crackles with age as the president makes
his earnest, uncoached speech. I was 9 years old at the time, and it wasn't
until years later that I understood the importance of his words or the lasting
impact of his message.
Of course, the speech will forever be remembered for Eisenhower's concerns
about a rising "military-industrial complex," which he described as "a permanent
armaments industry of vast proportions" with the potential to acquire - whether
sought or unsought - "unwarranted influence" in the halls of government.
The notion captured the imagination of scholars, politicians and veterans;
the military-industrial complex has been studied, investigated and revisited
countless times, including now, at its 50th anniversary. Looking back, it is
easy to see the parallels to our era, especially
how
the complex has expanded since Sept. 11, 2001. In less than 10 years, our
military and security expenditures have increased by 119 percent. Even after
subtracting the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the budget has grown
by 68 percent since 2001. In 2010, the United States is projected to spend at
least $700 billion on its defense and security, the most, in real terms, that
we've spent in any year since World War II.
However, at this time of increased concerns over our fiscal deficit and the
national debt, Eisenhower's farewell words and legacy take on added significance.
Throughout his presidency, Eisenhower continually connected the country's
security to its economic strength, underscoring that our fiscal health and our
military might are equal pillars of our national defense. This meant that a
responsible government would have to make hard choices. The question Eisenhower
continued to pose about defense spending was clear and practical: How much is
enough?
Early on, he realized that if the United States were to prevail in its existential
standoff with the Soviet Union, we would have to prepare for a long game. Unlike
our experience in World War II, which lasted less than four years, the Cold
War would last many decades. Eisenhower understood that we were facing a marathon,
not a sprint.
Moreover, the logic of nuclear deterrence made the conventional wars Ike
had commanded in the 1940s obsolete. Now, there could be no margin for error;
the Cold War brought with it different calculations, which were very costly
by nature. These new realities meant that the United States would not only need
to project power and resolve, but also had to ensure national solvency - no
easy task for a country that had to modernize while assuming, for the first
time, the mantle of global leadership.
The pressures Eisenhower faced during his presidency were enormous. Over
the years, as the Soviet Union appeared to reach military parity with the United
States, political forces in Washington cried out for greater defense spending
and a more aggressive approach to Moscow. In response, the administration publicly
asserted that there was no such thing as absolute security. "The problem in
defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying
to defend from without," Eisenhower said. And he
followed through, balancing the budget three times during his tenure, a record
unmatched during the Cold War.
This theme was introduced at the start of Eisenhower's first term. On April
16, 1953, the new president spoke to the American Society of Newspaper Editors,
just weeks after Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's death. In this "Chance for
Peace" speech - one as important as the farewell address but often overlooked
by historians - he seized the moment to outline the cost of continued tensions
with the U.S.S.R. In addition to the military dangers such a rivalry imposed,
he said, the confrontation would exact an enormous domestic price on both societies:
"This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the
sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more
than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of
60,000 population. . . . We pay for a single fighter with a half-million
bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could
have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all,
in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging
from a cross of iron."
Contrary to many historians' suggestions, Ike's farewell speech was not an
afterthought - it was the bookend to "Chance for Peace." As early as 1959, he
began working with his brother Milton and his speechwriters to craft exactly
what he would say as he left public life. The speech would become a solemn moment
in a decidedly unsolemn time, offering sober warnings for a nation giddy with
newfound prosperity, infatuated with youth and glamour, and aiming increasingly
for the easy life.
"There is a reoccurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and
costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties,"
he warned in his final speech as president. ". . . But each proposal must
be weighed in light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance
in and among national programs . . . balance between actions of the moment
and the national welfare of the future."
While the farewell address may be remembered primarily for the passages about
the military-industrial complex, Ike was rising above the issues of the day
to appeal to his countrymen to put the nation and its future first. "We . .
. must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease
and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material
assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political
and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to
come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."
This Story 50 years later, we're still ignoring Ike's warning. As I see my
grandfather's black-and-white image deliver these words, a simple thought lingers
in my mind: This man was speaking for me, for us. We are those grandchildren.
We are the great beneficiaries of his generation's prudence and sacrifice.
Until today, perhaps, we have taken American leadership, dominance and prosperity
for granted. In those intervening years, we rarely asked if our policies were
sustainable over the long haul. Indeed, it has only been since the catastrophic
financial meltdown in 2008 that we've begun to think about the generational
responsibilities we have for our grandchildren's prosperity and welfare.
Eisenhower's words, from the beginning of his presidency to the end, come
back to us from the mists of another era. They remind us, sadly, that sometimes
we must revisit our past to learn what we have always known.
Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of Dwight D. Eisenhower, is an energy
and international affairs expert and chairman emeritus of the Eisenhower Institute.
Of course, the speech will forever be remembered for Eisenhower's concerns
about a rising "military-industrial complex," which he described as "a permanent
armaments industry of vast proportions" with the potential to acquire -
whether sought or unsought - "unwarranted influence" in the halls of government.
...
Looking back, it is easy to see the parallels to our era, especially how
the complex has expanded since Sept. 11, 2001. In less than 10 years, our
military and security expenditures have increased by 119 percent. Even after
subtracting the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the budget has
grown by 68 percent since 2001. In 2010, the United States is projected
to spend at least $700 billion on its defense and security, the most, in
real terms, that we've spent in any year since World War II.
However, at this time of increased concerns over our fiscal deficit and
the national debt, Eisenhower's farewell words and legacy take on added
significance.
Throughout his presidency, Eisenhower continually connected the country's
security to its economic strength, underscoring that our fiscal health and
our military might are equal pillars of our national defense. This meant
that a responsible government would have to make hard choices. The question
Eisenhower continued to pose about defense spending was clear and practical:
How much is enough? ...
The problem is that military spending is spread out across several
budget items, so it's full cost is the sum of several departments (at
least Dept. of Defense, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Veterans Affairs,
Homeland Security, the CIA, and the portion of the interest on the debt
due to past borrowing for defense spending). In total, it appears to
be nearly $1T (and is, of course, by far the largest item in the discretionary
budget).
Sandwichman:
"The Speech Ike Didn't Give" (September 23, 1952) criticizing the "deceptive
prosperity" generated by Leon Keyserling's NSC-68 Cold War "stimulus package".
"How much is enough?" the last major office seeker to answer that question
with any sincerity was george McGovern's in 1972 i don't recall the details
but wiki suggests it asmounted to " an across-the-board, 37% reduction in
defense spending over three years"
the likes of that has never been part of the bi partisan game plan no
candidate inside the fringe has suggested anything remotely like that bold
plan for "public choice"
Sandwichman:
That's because, NSC-68 is the REAL constitution of the Unified National
Security State of America (UNSSA).
paine:
sandy u got that right for sure
its paul nitze and his nasty mentor dean acheson behind the bum's rush
--nsc-68-- to brass hat driven industrial prosperity
paine:
mean while among much else that in the end proved anti job class the
bi partisan MIC band wagon turned its back on american industry itself even
as our civilian production platform fritter itself away
at:
Sure enough: Military Keynesianism is the bipartisan industrial policy
of the US. GOP uses it as a spoils system; Dems use it to "look tuff" and
do actual R&D. Where do you think these here internets came from?
Fred C. Dobbs :
The M-I complex get rather well entrenched during the Eisenhower era, thanks
very much, but at least Ike felt guilty about it on the way out.
In this sesquicentennial of the Civil War, the War to Preserve the Union,
let's remember that that Federal government has as its principle reason
for being the preservation of the United States of America, as was determined
by that very first Republican, Abe Lincoln.
Maybe things'd be different if all those States-Rights Jeffersonian Democrats
had had their way back in the day.
Old memes die hard. We've got a military-industrial complex because that's
what is 'legitimate' for the US to put its money into. Who knew it was going
to work out so well?
CraigDB :
Not really the MIC per se, it would be any public/private entity that gets
that large a share of annual budget. It could easily be NASA, or NSF, or
DOE, DHS, or Green xyz, or infrastructure companies or health/pharma, or
banks. You name it, it is a feeding frenzy that is hard to wean off the
taxpayer/china nipple.
Ironman :
Let's not forget all of what Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address:
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment,
project allocations, and the power of money is ever present
* and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should,
we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy
could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
Rather than paying attention to just part of the warning, perhaps we
should pay attention to all of it.
cm:
Fortunately there is no similar concern about for profit private sector
domination of research. Both in setting research agendas and compelling
favorable research outcomes.
In Archive, New Light on Evolution of Eisenhower Speech * By SAM ROBERTS
The phrase that would emerge as the most enduring legacy of what became,
arguably, the most famous farewell address since George Washington’s evolved
over 20 months and was agreed to only a few days before it was delivered.
The words, in a speech by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, were transformed
from a warning against a “war-based industrial complex” into a “vast military-industrial
complex” and finally into a more vanilla “military-industrial complex,”
which seemed controversial enough without the qualifier.
Documents released Friday by the National Archives shed new light on
the genesis of the phrase in the televised address, which Eisenhower delivered
on Jan. 17, 1961, three days before his successor’s inauguration.
In the final version, the president recalled that until recently the
nation had no permanent arms industry, that “American makers of plowshares
could, with time and as required, make swords as well,” but said that the
country could no longer risk “emergency improvisation of national defense.”
An adequate military establishment and arms industry were vital, he said,
but their conjunction and “its total influence — economic, political, even
spiritual” also had “grave implications.”
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex,” Eisenhower warned. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced
power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination
endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”
In the version he read from that night, those words were underlined.
Several were typed in capital letters.
The newly released letters, memos and speech drafts — 21 in all — were
received by the National Archives from Grant Moos, whose father, Malcolm,
was Eisenhower’s special assistant and chief speechwriter.
“It’s probably the most important farewell address of the modern era,”
said Karl Weissenbach, director of the Eisenhower Presidential Library and
Museum in Abilene, Kan. “And now we get to see its evolution, which started
in May 1959 and didn’t end until it was delivered. We also learn the important
role of Milton Eisenhower, who was instrumental in making sure that his
brother’s thoughts would be correctly portrayed.”
The earliest White House memos suggesting a farewell address mentioned
only an appeal for bipartisanship. But the president wrote his brother on
May 25, 1959, of “the importance of getting our people to understand that
local affairs have a definite relationship to foreign affairs.” A year later,
another White House aide was urging the president’s speechwriter to read
Washington’s farewell address, especially its warning of “overgrown military
establishments.”
On Oct. 31, 1960, another speechwriter, Ralph E. Williams, warned of
a “permanent war-based industry” run by former military officials.
An undated draft titled “commencement” called for “jealous precaution”
(Milton Eisenhower later deleted “jealous”) by civilian authorities “to
avoid measures which would enable any segment of this military-industrial
complex to sharpen the focus of its own power at the expense of the sound
balance which now prevails.”
The president’s staff later expressed surprise at the phrase’s durability.
“I am sure that had it been uttered by anyone except a president who
had also been the Army’s five-star chief of staff, it would long since have
been forgotten,” Williams recalled years later.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment,
project allocations, and the power of money is ever present
** and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should,
we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy
could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
That’s been the key question asked of Wall Street’s biggest banks since the
September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, which sent shock waves through the
global financial system and led to the worst recession this country has seen
since the Great Depression.
But, there is another firm far from the circles of Wall Street for which
that same question should be asked, says
William Hartung, author of the new book
Prophets of War. The subtitle of his book says it all: Lockheed Martin
and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
With $40 billion in annual revenue, Lockheed Martin is the single largest
recipient of U.S. tax dollars. The company receives about $36 billion in government
contracts per year. In 2008, $29 billion of that was for U.S. military contracts
– a dollar figure 25% higher than its competitors Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman.
What does that mean for you, the U.S. taxpayer? According to Hartung, each
taxpaying household contributes $260 to Lockheed’s coffers each year!
All evidence enough that the company is "too big to fail", as Hartung tells
Aaron in the accompanying clip.
A prime example of Washington looking out for Lockheed happened just last
year when debate ensued over whether to continue the company’s grossly expensive
F-22 stealth fighter program, says Hartung, who has covered the defense industry
for years and is also the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the
New America Foundation.
The Pentagon eventually did suspend funds terminating Lockheed’s development
of the F-22 Raptor, which has been the most costly fighter plane ever. But,
at the same time the U.S. Defense Department cut off funds for the F-22, it
added an additional $4 billion to the Lockheed’s F-35 fighter plane program.
The government “basically took with one hand and gave back [to Lockheed] with
the other,” says Hartung of a company that is the only major contractor of fighter
planes for the U.S. Airforce.
Warning from the past
Two weeks from now marks the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s famous
“military-industrial complex” speech cautioning against “undue influence” from
large and politically powerful defense companies. According to Hartung, Lockheed
Martin epitomizes the exact threat Eisenhower warned about.
By now you might be wondering where the defense contractor’s remaining $7
billion in government contract goes. “They have got their fingers everywhere
now,” Hartung tells Aaron. As outlined in his book, Lockheed does way more than
produce military aircraft and weaponry. From the U.S. Census Bureau to the U.S.
Postal Service to the Internal Revenue Service, “pretty much name a government
agency and they are involved,” he says.
Despite Lockheed sheer size, its stronghold on so many government agencies
is evidence enough that the company is “too big to fail.” “If the government
becomes so dependent on [Lockheed], for many different activities it will be
hard to hold them accountable if they underperform or if there is some sort
of whiff of scandal.”
Bigger may not be better, but it's working
Hartung’s scathing criticism of Lockheed Martin comes from his belief that
“they have not done the job well, often enough,” pointing to decades of cost
overruns, a corporate history littered with corruption scandals and the fact
that the company was one of the first ever to receive a federal bailout back
in the 1970s.
When it comes down to it, Lockheed’s dominance – even with what some might
call a checkered past – has much to do with the company’s ability to influence
those in power, says Hartung. In 2009, it spent nearly $15 million on campaign
contributions and lobbying fees -- the second highest amount for defense contractors.
Another key factor that has helped the defense contractor secure the most
U.S. military contracts is the company’s ability to exploit the revolving door
between Washington, the industry and itself, says Hartung. Not only has this
led to the company having strong influence over those who hold the U.S. government's
purse stings, many who are former Lockheed employees or board members, it has
allowed the company to influence foreign policy decisions like pressing for
war with Iraq.
In the publicity notes for the book, Hartung claims “Lockheed Martin has
also funded right-wing think tanks that have done everything from press for
war with Iraq to lobby for the “Star Wars” missile defense program.” He tells
Aaron that they are using these think tanks to make the points that are “embarrassing
to make themselves.”
Hartung acknowledges that “we need companies like Lockheed Martin to defend
the country,” but he says that a lot more can be done to regulate the industry
by setting “stricter accountability rules.”
Tell us what you think!
David:
90% of the partners at large govt consulting firms are retired from the
pentagon armed services or previous high ranking govt officials. It is a
felony if a govt civil servant accepts employment from private firms to
help the private firm gain new business, but it obviously does not apply
to the corruption at the top of the Washington in-crowd. This same behavior
rewards politicians for accepting large campaign contributions from private
firms for favors. Our govt is being bought by private firms, lobbyists in
Washington, so that they continue to rob us. We need to change this law,
big time. Unit this behavior is rewarded with jail time, nothing will change.
Lets take back our democracy.
Signed,
A Patriot.
john:
Lockheed Martin builds things no other company in the world can build.
Each time they tee it up, it is to build something like the P-38, the SR-71,
the F-117A or the F-22, all of which had no peers when first built. Light
year leaps in technology cost money. Do you want the best aircraft, or not?
Fr33dumb D3vil:
An amazing, and sobering, experience to read the comments on these boards.
The ignorant masses negatively opining about the successes of others.
You drooling glass eyed rubes like your cell phones? Microwaves? Internet?
The list goes on and on. These modern advances are made possible by our
extensive defense R&D.
These industries are holding tech that will not be publically available
for 20 years. They studied more than 99% you. They are infinitely more intelligent
than 99% you. They support the economy at large with the dollars they receive.
Do they make mistakes? Every single entity on the earth has acted in a manner
that manifested less than peak efficiency, E.g. we all make mistakes. So
if you have ever made a mistake, perhaps you should give others the grace
you would appreciate in your own moments of regress.
When you all cry about any President being directly responsible for anything
other than a Veto you show your ignorance of executive process (You animals
vote sadly enough). When you slander companies, or their employees, you
know nothing about you show your ignorance. Malice and ignorance, like cancer,
are all too prevalent in the USA today. One can say our Republic has failed
in the fact that people who actually have intelligence and drive are represented
and maligned by those who do not.
Excuses are tantamount to weakness. The vast majority of you have infinite
excuses as to your inability to accomplish much in your lives and not one
reason why you can succeed. Those with success have earned it, in more cases
than not. Do not make the mistake in thinking because one person cheated
to get where they are all people did. This is a fallacy, an error in logic,
you embrace to feel better about your own perceived failures.
It is easy to berate the players on the field from the stands. It is
massively more difficult to get out there and play, win or lose. Most lack
perspective and respect due to massive narcissism and egocentricity. Your
miserable quiet whispers of lives are your rewards for sloth and venom.
You were lied to. The vast majority of you did not deserve the trophy
and you were not special. You also most likely resented the ones who did
and were. Your "feelings" blind you to the measurable realities of the world
in which you live. While most of you hope for change some actually go out
and create it.
Grow up America. Find joy in the success of others and look for solutions
to problems, not someone to blame for them.
A Yahoo! User:
Reading Jekyl Island, and am pretty sure, Lockheed is a company named
that got a bailed out in the seventies or eighties. The reason they have
all the government contracts is so that they would be able to pay back the
interest payments to the banks.
Discus:
Defense companies are a cesspool of corruption who corrupt their suppliers
as well. From my experience as an engineer in IC industry, the same chip
which you can buy from for 1$ is bought from the same company for $10 meeting
supposedly "higher" MIL specs for which the sales division of the company
leaves no stone unturned to keep the procurement managers for the Defense
companies "satisfied" through 5 course dinners etc.
The Military Industry Complex is a US Gov. charity catering to bullies
in nexus with a corrupt and well greased Congress.
The least that companies like Lockheed Martin can do is stop war mongering
like egging on George W. Bush to invade Iraq - when he was Governor of Texas.
The enormous profits they are making through raining missiles in Iraq, Gaza
etc. is blood money as tainted as the money made by IG Farben helping the
Third Reich.
By law they must be stopped from funding right wing war mongering think
tanks and funding the crazy war hawks.
Bryan Bender, reporter for the Boston Globe‘s Washington Bureau,
discusses the
very high percentage of retired high-ranking US military officers going
to work for defense contractors; the Pentagon’s limited oversight on conflicts
of interest that seems based on the assumption retired generals have an unshakable
code of ethics; how private equity firms – specializing in defense industry
investments – give compensation to rent-a-general firms for privileged information
about Pentagon contracts; why Eisenhower should have gone with the military-industrial-Congressional
complex version of his famous
farewell
address; and how retired Army Gen. Jack Keane – on behalf of AM General
– helped overturn the Army’s decision to repair instead of replace Humvees.
The last 70 years of modern warfare have been filled with atrocities, from
the first bomb that exploded the tranquility of Pearl Harbor on the morning
of December 7, 1941 to the advent of large-scale saturation bombing of civilian
centers culminating in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, from the
terror attacks of 9/11 to the ill-advised invasion of Iraq and subsequent quagmire.
In his ambitious and comprehensive comparative study Cultures of War,
historian John Dower exposes many striking similarities between the thoughts,
actions, and attitudes of Imperial Japan, the United States, and radical Islamists.
Dower further identifies compelling parallels between World War II and the
“War on Terror” that help to explain how the United States arrived at its current
predicament. Notable in this regard are the eerily similar mistakes of both
Imperial Japan and the United States. Both countries
misrepresented and misused historical analogies, denied historical fact, and
failed to understand and acknowledge links between the past and the present.
Understanding and appreciating history’s impact, through an unvarnished and
unbiased lens, Dower argues, may save mankind from making the same mistakes
again and again.
Dower first explores the parallels between Pearl Harbor and 9/11. In 1941,
as in 2001, the inability to anticipate imminent attack, despite numerous warning
signs, represents a stunning and colossal failure of both intelligence and imagination.
The audacity of both attacks, launched by supposedly inferior foes, shook the
very foundations of America and shattered the illusion of security and sense
of isolation from an otherwise turbulent world was shattered. This new reality
gave rise to fear, outrage, and the overwhelming determination to exact a terrible
retribution on those who had transgressed against America.
Both the Roosevelt and Bush administrations derived immediate benefits from
the attacks. Having previously faced popular opposition to entering the European
war, Roosevelt could use Pearl Harbor to unify the country on a war footing.
Sixty years later, having been awarded the presidency by the Supreme Court and
facing opposition to his domestic and foreign policy agenda, President Bush
similarly used 9/11 to unify the country behind his administration and the international
community behind the United States. Where Roosevelt succeeded in seizing his
opportunity, Bush failed. The Bush doctrine of preemption and his administration’s
tendency to consider the world in only black and white succeeded only in alienating
the United States from the international community. Restrictions on civil liberties
and the disaster that followed the invasion of Iraq destroyed American unity.
Bush ended his tenure amid increasing social polarization.
Dower goes on to consider terror and mass destruction in modern warfare,
particularly with regard to the initiation of targeting civilians. He reflects
on how one reconciles a strategy of massive and indiscriminate destruction with
the moral righteousness of one’s cause. To reconcile this moral dilemma, such
acts must be rationalized, sanitized, or simply ignored. The case of World War
II is particularly instructive as both Axis and Allied powers adopted strategies
targeting civilians despite having condemned such practices. In the new era
of “total war,” both sides rationalized the strategy as a way to defeat an insidious
and fanatical enemy.
Furthermore, both sides took active steps to shield the public and even those
in command from a horrible reality. “Urban industrial areas” was a popular euphemism
as was “dehousing,” which sanitized the reality of incinerating men, women,
and children. “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals,”
the architect of America’s aerial strategy, General Curtis LeMay, remarked to
future Secretary of State Robert McNamara. “What makes it immoral if you lose
and not immoral if you win?”
Finally, Dower ruminates on the shift of American military doctrine, following
World War II, toward the use of rapid and overwhelming force. Mass destruction
as an ideal form of warfare is perhaps the greatest legacy of World War II.
The hope that wars can be conducted with surgical precision, with maximum force
and the fear of a mushroom cloud on one’s own shores, illustrates the contradictory
nature of modern warfare.
Dower delivers a scathing critique of the notion that the occupation of Iraq
would resemble the occupation of Japan. Indeed, it seems that the similarities
are few and generally superficial, while the differences numerous and profound.
Hoping the success of the occupation of Japan could be repeated in Iraq speaks
to what can only be considered a delusional projection of historical understanding
onto current events.
Cultures of War offers an unbiased and matter-of-fact look into the
evolution of the attitudes governing modern warfare and their often-contradictory
nature. This necessarily will cause moments of discomfort, as the reader must
move beyond sanitized accounts and confront the horrible reality of modern warfare.
However, averting one’s eyes does a disservice to the victims, to history and
indeed, to mankind itself.
Yet judged by results, the opposite should surely be the case. Why is this
so?
The US military has fought five large-scale wars in the past fifty years,
resulting in a draw in Korea[1], a defeat in Vietnam, and three inconclusive
outcomes in Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan. That’s a record that makes the worst
inner-city public school look pretty good. At least the majority of students,
even at the worst schools, end up more or less literate.
The US military does an excellent job in defeating
anyone silly enough to put a conventional army in the field against it.
But, as a result there aren’t many adversaries so silly (even Saddam didn’t
expect war when he invaded Kuwait and did his best to avoid it in 2002-03).
Potential opponents either try to acquire nukes or fight with IEDs and suicide
bombers.
But the striking thing about military expenditure is that its failure rate
is so high. More or less by definition, it’s impossible for both sides to win
an armed conflict, but it’s certainly possible (and probably the par outcome)
for both sides to lose. So, the US success rate since 1950 is probably about
what would be expected. As I’ve mentioned previously, US experience of war (apart
from the Civil War) before 1950 was by contrast exceptionally favorable – even
the War of 1812 was claimed as a win
Moreover, in all sorts of respects the self-image of the US (as a land of
opportunity and social mobility, a generous giver of foreign aid, a beacon of
democracy in a generally undemocratic world and so on) seems in most respects
to have been set in concrete by 1950. The failure to learn anything from a string
of military failures and disappointments seems to fit with this.
I’m talking here mostly about the views of the American public, but these
views are even more predominant among the policy elite and the Foreign Policy
Community. I don’t think this is primarily because either the elite or the capitalist
class they might be regarded as representing benefit from wars. It’s true that
there is not much of a penalty for advocating disastrous wars, but as long as
you steer clear of a handful of topics, there is not much of a penalty for anything
in the US policy elite, once you are regarded as “serious”. And while some businesses
obviously benefit from, and lobby for, war, there are plenty more who would
prefer to make money trading with putative enemies like Iran and Iraq.
At least, the majority of Americans regard the Iraq and Afghan wars as mistakes
where the costs have outweighed the benefits. If that (correct) judgement could
be generalised into a recognition that military force rarely generates unequivocal
victory, and is rarely worth the cost even when it does, arguments like those
of Kristof might begin to prevail.
fn1. In fact, it would probably be more accurate to break the Korean War
into two parts: a brief and victorious defensive war in 1950 in which the North’s
invading army was thrown back across the border, and a counter-invasion of the
North which resulted in a disastrous defeat, and three years of bloody struggle
ending in the status quo ante. October 1950
marks the point when US military policy (at least as regards large-scale international
conflicts) shifted from reluctant involvement in wars started by others to an
increasing preference for pre-emptive military action.
fn2. I think this is an overestimate. Mortensen
is estimating the cost of keeping a US soldier in the field at $1 million a
year, but taking account of support costs and deferred costs, it’s probably
closer to $5 million, which implies that withdrawing a single platoon would
be enough.
Nick
Interestingly once you control for demography, the us school system appears
to do very well indeed: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html
I’ve yet Tobermory convinced but it certainly chimes with how seriously
the us seems to take it’s
Grimgrin:
Americans have confidence in their military
because building that confidence is one of the long term goals of the American
military, and they’ve been very successful at it.
Here’s an Al Jazeera program that explains how the Pentagon works with
Hollywod. It describes how the Pentagon trades access to equipment and personnel
for the right to review scripts, ensuring that media portrayals of the military
are positive.
We know the Pentagon does the same thing with reporters using the embedding
process and providing officially retired officers to give interviews to
journalists, and is able to ensure the majority of coverage is positive.
MR Bill:
It is also true that the military industrial complex (in that rabid socialist
D. W. Eisenhower’s phrase) is really profitable, and provides one of the
last bulwarks of higher paying manufacturing jobs. I know folks who drive
3-4 hours commute a day to Lockheed Marietta.. The military has got great
political support, is fetishized by a certain large number of folks, and
is one of the only things done by the government approved of by ‘Conservatives/Libertarians’
(philosophically, as opposed to based on it’s results..)
Roger Albin:
You’re overestimating the success of the American armed services. Name
1 unequivocal victory in a major conflict that the USA fought as the sole
or predominant combatant since the Spanish-American War. Only Gulf War 1
comes close (and we got that paid for by others). Americans have a particularly
unfortunate triumphalist view of WWII in which the crucial roles of the
Soviet Union, Britain, and the important roles of smaller states like Australia
simply don’t exist.
Anderson:
Name 1 unequivocal victory in a major conflict that the USA fought
as the sole or predominant combatant since the Spanish-American War.
The 1941-45 war against Japan, which by an accident of history we refer
to as if it were part of the 1939-45 war against Germany.
ScentOfViolets:
I don’t know if the premise of this post is correct. From my own recollections,
people seem to prefer cutting military spending over cutting spending on
education or conversely, increasing spending on education. (Googles) . .
. hmmmm, here’s something from earlier in the year with a halfway decent
graphic, a poll showing that cutting defense spending is more popular than
cutting education or Social Security. Eyeballing suggests the split is approximately
23/13.
As in so many other propositions that have come up recently, when someone
says that “Americans believe X”, you’ve got to ask “Which Americans?” The
answer to that one seems to be when fully parsed, “The Americans who count.”
piglet:
Questioning the cost-effectiveness of the military is Unamerican, Unpatriotic,
and probably Against the Bible. How dare you? Oh he’s a foreigner.
DFC:
I have heard once the phrase: “the dollar float in a see of oil”, and
that is true, and it is the reason US can be printing money like hell without
sink its own economy; as M. Friedman said “our debts are in dollars, not
in yens, pounds or marks…and we have the printer”
The dollar as global currency is based alone in the multiple security
agreements between the US and Saudi Arabia dating from Roosvelt presidency
in the WWII, due to the paranoid of the royal saudi family. The military
power is the base for that agreements and as consequence, the reason for
the unique situation of the US economy
Tim Wilkinson:
Relevant to the previous and quite diverting, if not exactly definitive:
Bertie Russell was not particularly notable as a social and political
thinker, but he was onto something when he observed that US society substitutes
quite rigid social control for its absent formal and substantive legal control
of the population. No doubt some yarn can be spun about settler communities
and the Wild West or something, I dunno.
I think it can be expressed even more simply: you can take the ape out
of the savannah, but you can’t take the savannah out of the ape. (Most of)
our species is obsessed with that kind of status-seeking bullshit—so many
that they literally diagnose failure to pay “sufficient” attention to social
status as a mental disorder—and if it isn’t expressed through official channels
it will come out through unofficial ones. Democracy is a great idea, for
a species slightly saner than ours and more concerned with truth than trendiness.
Otherwise we just keep screwing it up.
(Of course there’s a more hopeful school of thought that we can make
ourselves smarter and stop following every strongman whose plan of action
amounts to “rah, rah, ingroup!”, which is a pleasant-sounding ideal, but
if it worked in practice, why would we have this thread? In practice, even
the supposedly pro-reason side of the political spectrum psychologically
needs an authority figure to rally behind and define their cause with a
false impression of unity, and usually the first thing they do to create
the impression of unity is find an outgroup to denounce.)
Theophylact:
Tim Wilkinson @ #20: If you’re correct that Saddam Hussein was deliberately
misled about American intentions with respect to Kuwait, one might have
expected that April Glaspie’s subsequent diplomatic career would have been
more brilliant than it was. (Or perhaps she was simply a sacrificed rook,
of course.)
mclaren:
The actual cost of the U.S. military is 1.35 trillion dollars per year.
Naturally the Pentagon denies this. That comes to around 12% of the actual
current U.S. GDP, which runs around 11 trillion (not 14 trillion as claimed).
Do the simple arithmetic: 725 billion 2011 Pentagon outlay 50 billion
Department of Homeland Security 50 billion Blackwater (Xe) which has been
revealed as a CIA front 70 billion VA 73 billion annual military retirement
50 billion Pentagon “black” projects 22 billion classified air force space
program 50 billion NRO (military satellites) 50 billion NSA 50 billion CIA
(they now field assassination teams worldwide & run drones)
That’s 1.25 trillion. Add in miscellaneous minor expenses like DOE, which
is esentially entirely devoted to military R&D, etc., and you get 1.35 trillion.
Incidentally, the U.S. GDP is currently claimed as 14 trillion, which
is another obvious lie. Notice that prior to the global financial meltdown
in 2007 U.S. GDP was claimedas 14 trillion and therefore we must conclude
U.S. GDP hasn’t dropped in the last 3 years. This is obviously implausible.
We know for a fact that some 9 trillion of wealth evaporated in subprime
home mortgages and house prices haven’t bottomed yet. Assume by the time
house prices do bottom out the total comes to 12 trillion worth of wealth
lost. We also know that the commercial real estate market has lost as much
value as the housing market, and the commercial real estate market is roughly
twice the value of the personal housing market. That makes 36 trillion of
value total lost. Now do the basic math and with current interest rates
you find that bank profit on a typical mortgage runs about 12% per annum.
Common sense therefore tells us that the banking sector must have lost 12%
per annumof 36 trillion, which comes to slightly more than 4 trillion. Round
down to 4 trillion and subtract from 14 trillion and you get a current actual
GDP for America of approximately 10 trillion.
1.35 trillion per annum out of 10 trillion actual U.S. GDP comes to 13.5%
of GDP pissed away on U.S. military expenditures per annum. That’s a near-Soviet
level of expenditure. And it’s going up at 8% per annum with a core PCE
deflator of zero (as of lsat month), so that’s a real, not nominal, rate
of increase. That gives a doubling time of 8.5 years.
For comparison, U.S. total health care expenditures come to 22 trillion
per annum. Those are rising at 4% to 6% per annum (it varies from one year
to the next).
The obvious conclusion is that current U.S. military expenditures are
unsustainable.
Incidentally, these numbers remain conservative. I have sources which
cite 1.45 trillion as the actual total U.S. military budget per annum. But
I prefer to underestimate to be on the safe side.
Jack Strocchi:
Moreover, in all sorts of respects the self-image of the US (as a
land of opportunity and social mobility, a generous giver of foreign
aid, a beacon of democracy in a generally undemocratic world and so
on) seems in most respects to have been set in concrete by 1950. The
failure to learn anything from a string of military failures and disappointments
seems to fit with this. I’m talking here mostly about the views of the
American public, but these views are even more predominant among the
policy elite and the Foreign Policy Community.
There is no real mystery why the US military still retains high prestige
amongst US political leaders. It is still trading on the political capital
accumulated through its victory in the Cold War. And it has not suffered
a USS Missouri or Saigon Embassy moment in the Global War on Terror.
Most of the US foreign policy community and pundits have spent most of
their professional lives from, say mid-eighties through mid-noughties, savouring
the fruits of US military dominance. Its really only in the past five years
or so that things have gone sour. That is apparently too little time for
the anti-militarist message to sink in.
The main thing that Pr Q is missing here in US history from 1950-90 is
the prestige the US military achieved through its ultimate prevalence over
the USSR’s military in both the Space Race and Arms Race, culminating in
victory in the Cold War. That is what sticks in most policy makers minds.
Sure the US government suffered a massive set-back in Vietnam. But the
extraordinary success the USAF achieved in winning the first Iraq war at
trifling cost seems to have more or less balanced that ledger.
Now after its expensive misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan the US
military is “back in the red” so to speak. But the set-backs and disappointments
of the GWOT have not been reinforced by a humiliating surrender or rout,
as occurred in Vietnam. Just as the economic set-back of the GFC was not
reinforced by nationalisation and bankers doing the perp walk.
To really learn a lesson one needs to hit rock bottom and be humiliated
by one’s enemies. It hasn’t happened to the US - yet. Meanwhile US leaders
enjoy the kudos of talking loudly and carrying a big stick. With the PRC
picking up the tab for the time being.
Of course one day, and that day may not come for some time, there will
be a day of reckoning. The US will get into a confrontation with the PRC
where its lawyers, guns and money will not count for much and it will be
forced into a humiliating back-down. That will be the day that the calls
for retrenching bases and beating swords into public schools are heeded.
One big problem with the US political economy is that it is so big and
money-oriented that most of its major social institutions have tentacles
that stretch from the private to the public sector. Which makes them pretty
difficult to reform given the lobbying dollars they can throw at politicians
desperate to buy media time.
The financial-industrial complex can pretty much write its own laws.
It includes the FRB and GSEs who control trillions of dollars in resource
flow. Just look at Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac they spent $200 million on lobbying
over the noughties.
For sure other public-private organizations, like the medical-industrial
complex spend comparable sums. That why heath care is so hard to reform.
So its no wonder that the military-industrial complex is proving difficult
to reform. And don’t forget that the South loves the military, bases, guns
& wars you name it. So politicians of both sides go out of their way to
appease Southern militarists.
Things only change when catastrophe hits. It hasn’t hit yet, or not hard
enough. Give it time.
stubydoo:
mclaren,
Several flaws with your numbers. I’ll tackle here the $4 trillion
decrease in GDP idea: – average mortgage rates were never remotely close
to 12% (in the relevant timeframe) – not all mortgage interest is net bank
profit – they face funding costs – no reason why mortgage payments have
to decrease by the full amount of the decrease in the underlying – what
about the losses suffered by foreign investors?
GDP really is still $14 trillion. The average American has not suffered
a 30% decrease in income.
Regarding military expenditures: have you been careful to avoid double-counting
throughout? Are you confident your categories do not overlap?
Dr. Hilarius:
My purely anecdotal belief is that great deal of the “Support Our Troops”
enthusiasm and for the military in general is a backlash against criticism
of the military in the Vietnam era. Post-Korea/pre-Vietnam the military
was often an object of ridicule in popular American culture: Sgt. Bilko
and Beetle Bailey come to mind immediately. Veterans were not identical
with the military.
Along comes Vietnam. The reality is unimportant; many
Americans believe that the US could have won (whatever that means) Vietnam
if the military’s hands hadn’t been tied by politicians and the national
will sapped by protesters. The largely apocryphal stories of soldiers being
spit on and attacked by protesters fed this backlash. Both political parties
equated criticism of foreign policy as an attack upon the troops.( The lack
of a draft helps as well. It’s easier to support the military when you aren’t
compelled to serve.)
Strong support for the military reflects insecurity about the limitations
of military power.
anon/portly
“An obvious reason for the focus on military spending is that Americans
have massive confidence in their military and much less in their education
system, particularly the public school systems.
Yet judged by results,
the opposite should surely be the case. Why is this so?”
This neglected question actually has a simple answer. Everyone (virtually
everyone) in America spends 13 years in the public school system. Plus (virtually)
every parent has kids in the system. Relatively few Americans have direct
experience with the military, and even if they do, it’s as employees, not
as consumers of the end product.
PHB:
I think that Vietnam actually have the reverse effect on the elites.
Rather than conclude that military power was of limited utility, Bush,
Cheney and fellow chickenhawks were set on erasing the memory of the defeat.
That is the reason they could not tollerate the fact that Saddam survived
the end of the first Iraq war, it sent the wrong message as far as they
were concerned. So they were looking to start a new war from the moment
Bush took office.
It is now very clear that the current rate of military spending is increasing,
not decreasing the risk of war. As long as the US appears to be so strong
compared to possible adversaries there will always be some group of idiots
looking to use the military power.
During the buildup to the Iraq war, the US was being told two claims
that should have been realized as utterly incompatible. The first being
that the US is weak, so weak that it risks imminent destruction if it does
not start a new war. The second being the exact opposite, that the US is
so strong that success is guaranteed.
The US needs to reduce its military spending to less than a quarter of
its current rate. There is absolutely no national security justification
for the current level of spending.
Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall
Interesting post, but it overlooks the “strategic” accomplishments of US
military interventions. As Noam Chomsky points out, although technically
we lost in Vietnam, we succeeded in totally destroying the economic infrastructure
of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. All are countries that would have been powerful
economic and military allies of Communist China if we hadn’t intervened.
The main “strategic” accomplishments in Iraq: effectively voiding Sadam
Hussein’s contracts with Europe and China to develop Iraqi oil fields –
and even more importantly to market oil from these fields in euros rather
than dollars.
Afghanistan is somewhat more complicated, but
we are a clearly shifting the battlefield from
Afghanistan to Pakistan – which many Pakistani analysts feel is the real
target. Unfortunately neither Obama nor the mainstream media
are telling the truth about the real reasons for this war, either – namely
fierce US competition with their main economic rival (China) over Middle
East oil and gas resources.
And about the Pentagon fostering the secession of energy and mineral
rich Balochistan from Pakistan to become a US client state – just like energy
and mineral rich Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and the other former
Soviet republics.
And about CIA support for the Baloch separatist movement and their efforts
to disrupt operations at the Chinese-built port (to create an energy transit
route for Iranian oil and natural gas direct to China )in Gwadar, Pakistan.
Including the fact that the CIA is training young Baloch separatists in
bomb-making and other terrorist activities. I blog about this at
http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/2010/11/28/afghanistan-and-the-road-runner/
PHB:
Shouldn’t the real test of the military failure machine be whether its
existence brings concrete benefits to the US?
Does the military prevent foreign invasion?
Given the difficulty that the US has in its military adventures, I think
we are forced to conclude that the idea of the USSR being poised to invade
the US or Western Europe was always a ridiculous, self-serving fantasy.
Does the military machine enhance US influence?
It seems to be counter-productive. The US managed to dominate the Americas
in the 60s through the mid 80s, but any marginal benefit that the US might
have gained in that period is more than offset by the justified suspicion
towards the US of the democratic successors to the pentagon installed dictators.
Does the military machine reduce the chance of war?
Of course not. The exact opposite is true. Bush II would never have invaded
Iraq had he thought that there was a possibility of defeat. The militarists
want a machine for war, they have absolutely no interest in peace. They
can’t even be bothered to finish the war they started in Iraq or the war
in Afghanistan before they start another war in Iran. They are bloodthirsty
fools and the only way to mitigate the damage is to minimize the military
capability.
PHB
What size of military machine does the US require?
The US should reduce the size of the military budget until fools like
John Bolton are no longer clamoring for another war believing that the US
cannot possibly lose.
Reducing the military budget by 5% of the current expenditure per year
would be a good start. There is really no reason that the US needs to spend
even half of what it currently spends on the military.
Even with Putin slowly turning the country back into a police state,
Russia would have to roll through the ex-USSR satellites and Eastern Europe
before he got to the cold war era borders. Why would Russia even try when
they know that the Soviet occupation failed?
chris:
Given the difficulty that the US has in its
military adventures, I think we are forced to conclude that the idea of
the USSR being poised to invade the US or Western Europe was always a ridiculous,
self-serving fantasy.
Hold on—that only proves that the USSR couldn’t have invaded Western
Europe to its net benefit. I’m perfectly willing to stipulate that, but
what about the USSR invading Western Europe because of the delusions of
its own warmonger faction? The US, after all, demonstrates that militaristic
nations are perfectly willing to launch invasions that are objectively stupid
and doomed to devolve into bloody quagmires.
It’s possible, at least, that the degree to which the US military enables
and emboldens the US’s warmaking faction (increasing the risk of wars started
by the US) is offset, or even more than offset, by the degree to which it
deters the warmaking factions of other countries (decreasing the risk of
wars started by those countries—note that Saddam Hussein, for example, only
started a war based on his belief that the US would not interfere). IOW,
that the US military failure machine crowds out other nations’ military
failure machines, to the net benefit of the world.
I think that on balance that is probably not true, but IMO the question
deserves factual examination and not just dismissiveness.
Jack Strocchi :
PHB @ #123 said:
Given the difficulty that the US has in its military adventures, I
think we are forced to conclude that the idea of the USSR being poised to
invade the US or Western Europe was always a ridiculous, self-serving fantasy.
By that logic we must also be “forced to conclude that the idea of the
USSR poised to invade” Eastern Europe ‘’was a always a ridiculous self-serving
fantasy”. Oh, wait a minute…
The fact that some countries have experienced “difficulty…in military
adventures” has not stopped other countries, still less the USSR, from having
a go from time to time.
In military affairs one judges capabilities first. The fact is that the
Red Army started as a party militia in 1917 and within 40 years had defeated
the Tsarist Army, the Wermacht, was in control of pretty much all Northern
Eurasia, developed nuclear weapons and put a man into orbit. I am impressed
and NATO planners would be derelict in their duty if they did not have the
same impression.
And by the mid-seventies, sure, the USSR’s ideological generator had
run out of steam. But they still packed a pretty impressive military punch.
So just to be on the safe side, it made sense to stick with the containment
strategy.
LFC:
The First and Second Gulf Wars were very interesting episodes. In both
cases the United States provoked a war with a very weak state in order to
intimidate the world.
The first and second Gulf Wars were actually
quite different. The US did not “provoke” the first one in any recognizable
sense of “provoke”, regardless of what the US ambassador at the time said
or did not say to Saddam Hussein. The first Gulf War was a genuine coalitional
effort with widespread international support and legitimacy. The second
(the invasion of Iraq in 2003) was not. (The US undoubtedly did some stupid
things in between the two Gulf Wars, such as leaving US troops stationed
in Saudi Arabia. But that’s a different issue.)
Henri Vieuxtemps
@127 The first Gulf War was a genuine coalitional effort with widespread
international support and legitimacy.
Well, a big problem with this
assessment is that the effort wasn’t consistent with the way other similar
situations are treated. Selective application of principle can’t be legitimate.
LFC:
the effort wasn’t consistent with the way other similar situations are
treated
There haven’t been that many similar situations in recent
years. Operation Desert Storm was launched under UN authorization (SC Res
678 of 29 November 1990). There are lots of questions one could raise about
how the war was conducted (scale of civilian casualties and suffering, ‘the
highway of death,’ etc.), but the decision to initiate the first Gulf War,
as distinct from how the war was conducted, seems to have been “as near
to a legitimate and lawful [one] as any war of the twentieth century” (R.
Jackson, The Global Covenant, p.216).
mclaren:
Stubydoo incorrectly claimed:
Several flaws with your numbers. I’ll
tackle here the $4 trillion decrease in GDP idea: – average mortgage rates
were never remotely close to 12% (in the relevant timeframe) – not all mortgage
interest is net bank profit – they face funding costs – no reason why mortgage
payments have to decrease by the full amount of the decrease in the underlying
– what about the losses suffered by foreign investors?
GDP really is still $14 trillion. The average American has not suffered
a 30% decrease in income.
Stubydoo gets it so badly wrong it’s hard to know where to start on correcting
him. First, a catastrophic decrease in income to the banking sector does
not translate to the average American suffering a 30% decrease in income.
What happens when the American banking sector loses 4 trillion per year
of income is that the U.S. banking system becomes insolvent since their
net cash inflows can’t cover their outflows. That’s where we are today.
All American banks are effectively insolvent today and most of them are
“zombie banks” of the kind common in Japan after their financial meltdown
in the late 80s/early 90s. This is why American banks keep going belly up
even though the U.S. taxpayer has shoveled trillions into bailing them out.
The income stream from all those non-performing
home mortgage loans and commercial real estate loans is simply no longer
there.It’s gone, and it’s gone
forever. Neither home prices nor commercial real estate values are coming
back to their bubble values in your lifetime or mine.
So obviously Stubydoo is spouting nonsense when he talks about the average
American’s income dropping by 30%. What has happened is that the U.S. banking
sector has seen its income drop catastrophically. The banking sector makes
up 30% of the U.S. economy, so you might think it isn’t that serious.
But finance accounts for up to 70% of the profit of many American corporations—GE’s
predatory loan finance operations used to account for 70% of GE’s total
profit. That profit has now gone away. So it’s
a double whammy: corporations like GE which had maintained profit by turning
into loan shark operations are now seeing their bottom lines hit badly.
But once again, this is corporate income getting hit, not the income
of the average American. Corporations have compensated by moving more of
their operations overseas.
The 12% figure comes only partly from the direct income from home mortgage
loans. Banks make points on a mortgage (a fee they charge the homeowner
for originating the loan) and even more importantly, banks turn around the
sell the mortgage as part of a tranch of CDOs. Banks make much more than
just the standard 5.5% or 6%; they make another percent or two on point,
then they make another couple of percent by slicing the mortgages up, repackaging
them, and selling them as securitized financial instruments.
Add it all up, and you get 6% + 1.5% +2.5% or thereabouts, which comes
to 10% to 12% profit on the mortgage all told, depending on how many “points”
the bank gets and depending on how many crappy junk-grade mortgages it could
slice up and repackage and sell for a huge premium. Reselling those mortgages
was tremendously profitable. 2.5% on reselling a garbage mortgage repackaged
as a AAA-rated CDO is almost certainly far too low.
So Stubydoo is wrong across the board. Everything he said is just flat-out
false. The banks made tremendous profits on mortgages until the whole game
collapsed, and banks really have seen their income stream collapse catastrophically,
to at least the tune of 4 trillion per year, since the financial meltdown.
And last but not least, common sense tells
us that when 36 trillion dollars in assets blows up and goes away, the income
from those assets must also have vanished. That’s just basic.
The claim that U.S. GDP hasn’t dropped from the 14 trillion dollar figure
bandied about in 2007 doesn’t even pass the straight-face test. U.S. GDP
must have dropped between 2006 and 2010, but according to the bogus official
numbers, it hasn’t. That’s so absurd we know immediately something is wrong
with those official numbers, thus the need to do a little arithmetic.
The author shows how these military contractors
exploit war, destroy democracy, and steal from the taxpayers through
their corporate corruption. A must read.
Aldor: Negative:
From the first page it is obvious that Mr. Hartung is determined to show
that Lockheed is a conspirator with the government for the purpose of extracting
huge sums of money from the taxpayer.
Little or no mention of the really great
technological advances; or of the many really great airplanes that Lockheed
has , and continues to build. A very biased, negative book.
The author points out how Rumsfeld as Secretime mover behind the CIA's
infamous Team B. That panel forced acceptance of its "findings' that the
Soviet Union was rapidly overtaking the United States in military power.
The author notes that the Soviet archives reveal that even the supposedly
too low original estimate of the CIA was vastly exaggerated. .Rumsfeld of
course, played a key role in the late 90's arms industry funded movement
to portray North Korea as able to quickly develop missles to hit the U.S.
These frauds avoided addressing the issue of whether North Korea would really
build up some missiles, then just haul off and launch them at the United
States, knowing full well North Korea would be wiped off the planet in retaliation.
Rumsfeld, he observes, played a role in opening the funnel of American arms
and WMD materials to Saddam in his visits with Saddam in 1983-84.
He shows how Rumsfeld might have alerted Carlyle Group CEO Frank Carlucci
about the planned cancellation of one of it's subsidiary's programs to build
the Crusader artillery system. Several months before the cancellation, Carlyle
suddenly put the subsidiary on the stock market so that it might draw in
shareholders and took out a huge loan based on the inflation of the value
of the subsidiary and distributed it to shareholders and execs. Carlyle
is of course the group which George Bush Sr. advises and whose executive
James Baker and his law firm are representing the Saudi royal family against
the families of 9-11 victims.
Rumsfeld was on the board of the Swiss engineering firm ABB for years..
That firm made the contract to oversee the construction of North Korea's
two light water nuclear reactors. North Korea of course is one of the reasons
we have to spend 400 billion on defense according to people like Rumsfeld
who of course advocates that the reactor deal shouldn't have been made.
. Rumsfeld claimed ludicrously to know nothing about the deal. Of all the
ABB board members, all but one, who insisted on anonymity refused to talk
to a Fortune magazine reporter about Rumsfeld and this deal. Rumsfeld is
obviously very feared, the author notes.
He discusses the deal that had the Pentagon be leased a hundred Boeing
commercial aircraft to be transformed into aerial refueling tankers. And
it seems from documents released by John McCain's office that Darleen Dryun,
Airforce undersecretary, gave Boeing the details of its rival Airbus's bid
for the project. Dryun then quit her Pentagon job to become a top official
of Boeing's Missile Defense division. The author discusses the none-too
subtle campaign contributions made to Senator Ted Stevens, Senate appropriations
chair just before this deal was put through.
The author notes that Richard Perle, while head of the Defense policy
board, used that position to try to lobby some rich Saudis into investing
in his new security oriented firm, Trieme. Perle claimed that he wanted
to talk about Iraq, but his interlocutor in the deal, Adnan Koshoggi of
Iran-Contra fame, only mentioned in his message to the Saudis about investing
in Trieme. Then Stephen Laboton of the New York Times revealed that Perle
offered his services to the bankrupt telecom firm Global Crossing to influence
the U.S. government to allow it to sell one of its firms to China, which
is not allowed to receive U.S. high tech resources. Perle advertised himself
in his affidavit to Global Crossing as someone with great insider connections
because of his post. Perle insisted that this affidavit was a clerical error.
He tried to use his influence to allow Loral to resume selling high tech
satellite stuff to China. According to Hirsch none of Perle's fellow board
members knew of the existence of Trieme and were quite upset about it.
Then there's the redoubtable Mr. Cheney and Halliburton. After going
through the motions of competitive bidding under public pressure, the army
corp of Engineers suddenly accelerated the schedule for work in Iraq's oil
infrastructure so that Halliburton would be the best placed firm to do that
under the schedule, it already being in Iraq as a result of a no bid contract
to put out oil fires. Cheney receives hundreds of thousands in "deferred
compensation" from the company. He denied any remaining "ties' with the
firm but his spokesperson, accoding to the author, said that the deferred
payment technically did not constitute a "tie."
The author notes one of the more blatantly questionable appointments
in the present administration, former Lockheed Martin executive Everett
Beckner being picked to oversee the Nevada Nuclear test site, which Lockheed
partly runs. Many Bush officials sit on the board of groups like the Center
for Security Policy run by Frank Gafney Jr. Gafney dosen't seem to think
his intellectual integrity is compromised by his group being funded by the
arms companies who stand to make huge profits with the policies he advocates.
The author cites some statistics about the dramatic rise in CEO pay since
9-11. He points out that Lockheed Martin's annual income from government
contracts is more than that for the top Federal program for the poor. The
Leave No Child Behind Program is being underfunded by 10 billion.
About 800 million in taxpayer money was used to subsidize the merger
of Lockheed and Martin Marietta, supposedly to encourage these two firms
to consolidate, making them more efficient. This Clinton administration
encouraged merging has left a few big firms in control of the arms market
and with this oligopoly are in an even better position to easily get expensive
contracts from the government. The merging-consolidation has also encouraged
defense worker layoffs as this impresses shareholders that the firm is trying
to become efficient.
R. D. Waters "rdwaters":
When corruption and election meet, April 9, 2004 By R. D. Waters "rdwaters"
(Newton, NC United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME) This review
is from: How Much Are You Making on the War Daddy? A Quick and Dirty Guide
to War Profiteering in the Bush Administration (Paperback) One of the oddest
trends of the current "us-versus-them" division between George W. Bush supporters
and his detractors is the complete inability to find some common ground
on issues that should enrage both sides. Hartung's focus is on the Bush
administration because as of the writing of this review that is the group
in power. However, make no mistake Bush supporters, Hartung has no problem
bringing down Democrats who indulge in unseemly relationships with corporations
in the military business. The problem, as Hartung points out, is that both
parties get into bed with corporations by accepting huge donations for political
races and return the favor via legislation changes, special considerations,
and other questionable, if not downright unethical, methods. The intertwining
of boardrooms, Washington appointments, lucrative contracts, and political
campaign money forces taxpayers to cough up billions each year (and well
into the future). Yet many of these global conglomerates pay a fraction
of their fair share of taxes by establishing offshore tax shelters.
The coziness of Wall Street and the Pentagon leads to enormous opportunities
for abuse such as no-bid contracts, a topic so recently in the news in the
current war on Iraq. And guess who pays? Look in the mirror my friends.
While I'm not sure I'd recommend this book as the final word on the topic,
I'd say it was a good starting place, particularly if you are interested
in the current administrations octopus-like ties to global corporations.
If you can put aside the labels "Democrat" and "Republican" for a while,
you might get worked up a little about how your tax dollars are being abused
on a daily basis and start lobbying your Congressional representatives about
PACs and other questionable funding strategies.
J.L. Populist (WI,USA): War Profiteering and Policy Makers
The central question posed by William Hartung is this-Are we as a democracy
prepared to deal with the threat implied by the dangerous gathering of corporate,military,and
governmental power in a small circle or group? "Why didn't we realize that
George W. Bush was a radical,right-wing,neo-conservative 'wolf' dressed
up in compassionate conservative 'sheep's' clothing?" is a question on page
4 that I have found myself pondering. I call it voter's remorse.
Some issues that the author addresses quite well in the book are:
The identity of the "Vulcans", what their task was, areas of experience,
how they got their nickname, and who chose and assembled them.
The farcical process by which Cheney basically selected himself
as vice president.
The delusional exaggerations that have been Rumsfeld's trademarks
throughout his career and his ties to various companies as an expensive
lobbyist.
Rumsfeld's connection to Saddam Hussein in the 80's and his "nuclear"
connections with North Korea.
The Carlyle Group and it's infamous crony connections.
The many fiascoes of John Bolton.
How think tanks are biased by means of financial support.
The neoconservative think tanks membership and how they set policies
in Dubya's administration.
The identity of the warhawks that schemed up the policy of "preventive
war".
The abuse of his position as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board
by Richard Perle in solicting funds for his company-Trireme. Which coincidentally,
was incorporated in November of 2001 in time to benefit from the foreseen
military/security spending boom.
Mr. Hartung references a Seymour Hersh report of Perle's unethical pursuit
of funding. He quotes Paul Krugman on Bush's
policy -- "leave no defense contractor behind".
The author has Chapter notes at the end of each chapter which cite sources.
"How Much Are You Making on the War Daddy?" is an excellent expose' on
the profiteers of the current wars and the people
that actually make the policies of the current president.
K. M. "literary devotee"(California) "my country is launched on
a dangerous path that it must abandon or else face the consequences", March
2, 2007
So declares Chalmers Johnson in NEMESIS, the completing volume of a trilogy
that includes BLOWBACK and THE SORROWS OF EMPIRE. Nemesis is also the name
of a Greek goddess who is "the spirit of retribution, a corrective to the
greed and stupidity that sometimes governs relations among people." She
stands for the "' righteous anger'" to which Americans must awake if our
Republic is to survive rather than be as "doomed as the Roman Republic was
after the Ides of March that spring of 44 BC."
In seven relentless chapters -- 1. "Militarism and the Breakdown of Constitutional
Government 2. Comparative Imperial Pathologies: Rome, Britain, and American
3. Central Intelligence Agency: The President's Private Army 4. US Military
Bases in Other People's Countries 5. How American Imperialism Actually Works:
The SOFA in Japan 6. Space: The Ultimate Imperialist Project 7. The Crisis
of the American Republic -- Johnson presents fact after fact to support
his unswerving thesis that the United States government is empire building
in an aggressive, Ugly American way; and that we Americans cannot sustain
both a viable republic at home and a world hegemony. The two are incompatible.
Chapter 2's discussion alone is worth the price of NEMESIS. Johnson recounts
the Roman slide from republic to tyranny which America is currently following.
Then he contends that Britain's divestiture of its empire preserved its
domestic democratic institutions, and states that for the USA, "the choice
is between the Roman and British precedents."
Then the focus turns to topics that drive home the USA's far-flung web
of control and the immense power it wields globally. The incredible hubris
of the US as it occupies Iraq, as it establishes secret prison bases internationally,
as it reneges on agreements and interferes in other sovereign nations' elections,
as it spends hundreds of billions of dollars on defense systems and occupations
that don't demonstrably defend the homeland, as it blots out additional
rights at home in the name of security, is copiously documented. Generally,
the overwhelming criticism of US government actions is persuasive due to
the unfailing use of sources: the Notes at the end of NEMESIS cover fifty
pages. However, the discerning reader will at times perceive that Johnson
has stacked the deck. The author's preoccupation with indicting American
actions sometimes glosses the fact that the US isn't the only nation to
play fast and loose in the game of international posturing and positioning.
Still, any reader who possesses a grounded grasp of history and understands
that other countries in the world also act -- sometimes precipitously and
with their own thirst for empire-building -- will recognize Johnson's bias
and compensate for it.
NEMESIS is an important, well-written, well-substantiated contribution
to the growing library of books warning that America's political and military
policies are sliding us closer to imperialistic totalitarianism, a very
real threat. This third volume of the Blowback Trilogy is highly recommended
reading for all Americans who feel "righteous anger" and truly want to prevent
such a fate.
Explaining why America is broke is rather simple. All we have to do is look
at two separate and distinct problem areas: public unions and defense spending,
then generalize the problem. Let's start with a look at defense spending.
Here's an article on Foreign Affairs magazine by William Pfaaf making a solid
case
How Militarism Endangers America . The article is subscription, but a decent
sized synopsis and lead-in follows:
Summary:
The United States has built a worldwide system of more than 1,000 military
bases, stations, and outposts -- a system designed to enhance U.S. national
security. It has actually done the opposite, provoking conflict and creating
insecurity.
WILLIAM PFAFF wrote a syndicated column that appeared in the International
Herald Tribune from 1978 to 2006 and contributed political "Reflections"
to The New Yorker from 1971 to 1992. His latest book, The Irony of Manifest
Destiny: The Tragedy of America's Foreign Policy, was published in June.
[Article Start]
It is time to ask a fundamental question that few government officials
or politicians in the United States seem willing to ask: Has it been a terrible
error for the United States to have built an all-but-irreversible worldwide
system of more than 1,000 military bases, stations, and outposts? This system
was created to enhance U.S. national security, but what if it has actually
done the opposite, provoking conflict and creating the very insecurity it
was intended to prevent?
The most compelling arguments for opposing this system of global bases
are political and practical. U.S. military bases have generated apprehension
and hostility and fear of the United States, and they have facilitated futile,
unnecessary, unprofitable, and self-defeating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
and now seem to be inviting enlarged U.S. interventions in Pakistan, Yemen,
and the Horn of Africa. The 9/11 attacks, according to Osama bin Laden himself,
were provoked by the "blasphemy" of the existence of U.S. military bases
in the sacred territories of Saudi Arabia. The global base system, it seems,
tends to produce and intensify the very insecurity that is cited to justify
it.
AN ACCIDENTAL EMPIRE
The United States' present global military deployment does not seem to
be the product of conscious design, nor was it assembled absent-mindedly.
In part, it is the natural result of bureaucracy left unchecked. At the
end of World War II, a precipitous dismantling of the U.S. wartime deployment
was halted only by the outbreak of the Cold War. The United States' intervention
in Vietnam brought some base expansion in Southeast Asia, but after its
failure in Vietnam, the U.S. military was determined to have nothing further
to do with insurgencies and quickly returned to reorganization and retraining
for what it still considered its primary mission: classical warfare in Europe
in the event of a Soviet invasion. This eventually led to the brilliant
blitzkrieg against Iraq in the first Gulf War, fought under the Powell Doctrine
of popular support, overwhelming force, focused objectives, and rapid withdrawal.
America's Misdirected Missile
I am 100% in agreement with the synopsis and
prelude as presented above. Here is a second article on the same subject. This
one is courtesy of the Business Spectator.
The latest WikiLeaks scoop for The Age is a cable from the United States
embassy in Canberra expressing concern to Washington about Australia's ability
to meet its purchases of military equipment. Australia's defence budget
currently sits at around $22 billion a year and, apparently, US diplomats
were left unimpressed by the efforts of Australia's Defence Materiel Organisation
chief Stephen Gumley to explain how Australia would meet its aims to increase
military spending, as laid out in the White Paper. While the article didn't
reveal whether or not the cable's author appreciated the irony of a US official
lecturing anyone about measured military spending, this graph should really
be passed on to them – just in case.
While this graph puts the US defence budget at $US711 billion in 2009,
that doesn't include a number of "off-budget" items that, on some estimates,
push US defence spending above $US1.3 trillion. And yet, America continues
to drown in debt with only modest efforts to reign in how much it puts towards
guns, tanks and missiles. Now, being the world's superpower invariably comes
with a large military budget and sure some cash can go missing. But in 2002,
then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted that on some estimates the
Pentagon had lost track of $US2.3 trillion in transactions and there was
no way of ascertaining how the money was spent. How long will it be before
the US really does something about its own military spending problems?
For a complete graph and additional commentary, please see the article.
There
is no rational reason for such spending. So how does it happen? The answer is
the same way we are stuck with collective bargaining and absurd public union
wages and benefits. Let's compare.
Public Unions
In the case of public unions, union members lobby vociferously for untenable
wages and benefit packages. Greedy politicians willing to accept bribes to get
reelected, go along. On any threat of reduction in benefits, union organizers
get out the vote with massive fear-mongering campaigns promising ruin if they
do not get what they want. At election time unions donate massively to candidates
willing to back union sponsored agenda. Over time, school boards, city halls,
and legislative bodies in general get packed with politicians accepting bribes
(campaign contributions) from the unions.
Warmongers
Greedy politicians willing to accept bribes to get reelected, support massive
defense budgets. Defense contractors as well as those receiving handouts from
defense contractors label anyone not in favor of wars and massive military spending
as "soft on defense". With massive fearmongering campaigns, including pictures
of nuclear bombs going off, those organizations are able to whip up public sentiment
to do whatever they want, which essentially is to spend more on defense. Every
soldier in another country is another soldier that needs to be equipped. At
election time defense contractors donate massively to candidates willing to
waste more money on needless wars that do not need to be fought. Over time,
legislative bodies in general get packed with politicians accepting bribes (campaign
contributions) from warmongers.
Unfortunately, "compromise" is such that taxpayers get stuck with the worst
of both. We have baseless wars and untenable defense spending. We also have
untenable collective bargaining rules, untenable social handouts, and untenable
union wages and benefits.
General Terms
It's easy to generalize the above example. I received this email from reader
"Kevin" after I wrote the above but before I posted it. Kevin had seen the union
example above as I had used it previously. Kevin writes ....
Hello Mish
Here is the corporate lobbyist problem in a nutshell:
Organizations of all types lobby vociferously for untenable subsidies
and tax breaks. Greedy politicians willing to accept bribes to get reelected,
go along. On any threat of reduction in subsidies or increase in taxes,
the organizations get out the vote with massive fear-mongering campaigns
promising ruin if they do not get what they want. At election time organizations
donate massively to candidates willing to back their agenda. Over time,
board of directors, city halls, and legislative bodies in general get packed
with politicians accepting bribes (campaign contributions) from the organization.
Kevin had written "corporations" but I changed it to "organizations" to be more
broad-based. The above describes quite nicely what happened with health care
legislation and it sure helps explain earmarks as well.
The big problems are military spending, public unions, and entitlements.
However, problems big and small are everywhere you look, and the process of
buying votes and seeking special favors is generally smack in the midst of it
all.
Republicans keep campaigning for "small government". It certainly would be
nice if they delivered for a change. Unfortunately, Republicans will not give
in on military spending (nor will Obama quite sadly), and Democrats won't budge
on entitlements.
Compromise in D.C. most often means taxpayers get the worst of what each
party has to offer.
There is no any real countervailing force for Repugs right now. We might argue
is Obama Bush III or Clinton II but distinction between Democrats and Republicans
is an illusion that is carefully maintained by MSM. This is just two wings of the
same party of Oligarchy.
What, pray tell, gives you the impression that the big O was "forced"
to accept anything? All of the evidence suggests he has done what he has
wanted all along, not withstanding his demonstrably false statements to
the contrary.
To wit, the secret negotiations in the WH with health insurers and subsequently
allowing them to write the "reform" in the Senate (look up, e.g. Liz Fowler,
former and likely future Wellpoint VP) as one major example.
Obama in deeds and often in words has demonstrated
he is effectively a trojan horse in the thin shell that has remained of
FDRs Democratic Party.
More and more people are starting to realize that Obama is a right winger.
You're obviously not one of them. If you start looking beyond your wishful
thinking, that might change. When enough people wake up, the electoral changes
you speak of may indeed come about. While Hope (heh) springs eternal, I'm
not holding my breath.
ilsm:
The US does not tax too much, that is not the problem.
The US spends too much on the wrong things: War is wrong.
War takes resources away from productive uses.
Europe, where the kind of war the US likes to pay for originated like
the Maginot Line (Star Wars) and colonies, devotes less than one third of
government outlays as the US.
If the spending side were reduced by $400B, the US would still out spend
its 12 largest allies, there would be huge tax cuts.
And the resources freed would go to fixing the issues the country needs
to address.
This broohaha is diverting attention from the real issue and that is
the militarists pillaging the US.
anne
ILSM:
The US does not tax too much, that is not the problem. The US spends
too much on the wrong things: War is wrong. War takes resources away from
productive uses.
[We really need to think this through carefully, there has been some
work on the relative loss of productive work in the wake of war, but not
nearly enough. *
The Economic Impact of the Iraq War and Higher Military Spending
By Dean Baker
Executive Summary
There has been relatively little attention paid to the Iraq War's impact
on the U.S. economy. It is often believed that wars and military spending
increases are good for the economy. This is not generally true in most standard
economic models. In fact, most models show that military spending diverts
resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and
ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment.
In order to get an approximation of the economic impact of the recent
increase in military spending associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
the Center for Economic and Policy Research commissioned Global Insight
to run a simulation with its macroeconomic model. It produced a simulation
of the impact of an increase in annual U.S. military spending equal to 1
percent of GDP, approximately the actual increase in spending compared with
the pre-war budget. We selected the Global Insight model for this analysis
because it is a commonly used and widely respected model. Global Insight
produced a set of projections that compared a scenario with an increase
in annual military spending equal to 1.0 percent of GDP (current about $135
billion) relative to its baseline scenario. This is approximately equal
to the increase in defense spending that has taken place compared with the
pre-September 11th baseline.
The projections show that:
• After an initial demand stimulus, the effect of higher defense spending
turns negative around the sixth year. After 10 years of higher defense spending,
payroll employment would be 464,000 less than in the baseline scenario.
After 20 years the job loss in the scenario with higher military spending
rises to 668,100 compared to the baseline scenario.
• Inflation and interest rates would be considerably higher in the scenario
with higher military spending. In the first five years, the annual inflation
rate would be on average 0.3 percentage points higher in the scenario with
higher military spending. Over the full twenty year period, inflation averages
approximately 0.5 percentage points more in the high defense spending scenario.
After five years, the interest rate on 10-Year Treasury notes is projected
to be 0.7 percentage points higher than in the baseline scenario. After
ten years, this gap is projected to rise to 0.9 percentage points, and after
twenty years to 1.1 percentage points.
• Higher interest rates are projected to lead to reduced demand in the
interest sensitive sectors of the economy. After five years, annual car
and truck sales are projected to go down by 192,200 in the high military
spending scenario. After ten years, the drop is projected to be 323,300
and after twenty years annual sales are projected to be down 731,400.
• Annual housing starts are projected to be 17,900 lower in the high
military spending scenario after five years, 46,200 lower after ten years,
and 38,500 lower after twenty years. The cumulative projected drop in housing
starts over the twenty year period is 530,000. The drop in annual existing
home sales is projected to be 128,400 after five years, 247,900 after ten
years and 286,500 after twenty years.
• Higher interest rates are projected to raise the value of the dollar
relative to foreign currencies. This makes imports cheaper, causing people
in the United States to buy more imports and makes U.S. exports more expensive
for people living in other countries, leading to a drop in exports. The
model projects that in the high military spending scenario, high imports
and weak exports causes the current account deficit to increase (become
more negative) by $90.2 billion (2000 dollars) after five years, compared
to the baseline scenario. The current account deficit is projected to be
$72.5 billion higher after ten years and $112.8 billion higher (both in
2000 dollars) after twenty years. The cumulative effect of higher imports
and weaker exports over twenty years is projected to add approximately $1.8
trillion (in 2000 dollars) to the country’s foreign debt.
• Construction and manufacturing are the sectors that are projected to
experience the largest shares of the job loss. While construction is projected
to have a net gain of 8,500 jobs after five years, it is projected to lose
144,200 jobs after ten years and 211,400 jobs after twenty years in the
high military spending scenario. Manufacturing is projected to lose 44,200
after five years, 95,200 jobs after ten years, and 91,500 jobs after twenty
years in the high military spending scenario. Two-thirds of the projected
job loss is in the durable goods sector.
The paper notes that military spending is not generally perceived to
cost jobs, however, in standard economic models, its impact can be thought
of in the same way as spending on the environment, which is generally believed
to cost jobs. While tax and emission restrictions are often used to achieve
environmental ends, it is also possible to reach environmental targets by
paying people to do things that will reduce pollution. For example, it is
possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by paying people to buy more
fuel efficient cars and appliances, or paying them to install insulation
and other energy saving devices.
In the case of both increased military spending and paying people to
take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, resources would be pulled
away from their market directed uses. In standard economic models, this
redirection of resources will cause the economy to operate less efficiently
and therefore lead to slower growth and fewer jobs. In the scenario modeled
in this exercise, higher interest rates are the mechanism that slows the
economy and leads to fewer jobs.
In policy debates, it is important to recognize the potential job loss
from military spending. The potential economic costs are often a factor
in debates over environmental policy. Economic costs should also be recognized
in debates over military policy. It would be useful to have the Congressional
Budget Office produce its own projections of the economic impact of a sustained
increase in defense spending.
[Currently basic military spending is running $830.8 billion yearly,
which 18 months later is $93.5 billion more than was spent under President
Bush in 2008.]
So the cycle goes on and on, and the rot and dysfunction grows deeper, and
ever more intractable. The people’s concerns are not only not addressed; they
are not even articulated by anyone in the lucrative, sinister game of
King of the Hill played by the two factions, both of which are pledged, body
and soul, to elite rule, corporate rapine and militarist empire. And certainly,
neither the corporate media nor the educational system will do anything to help
inculcate a deeper sense of history (“History is bunk,” said that quintessential
American, Henry Ford; you can’t make no money from it, so what’s the point?),
or provide any wider, deeper context for articulating – and confronting – the
causes of the electorate’s dissatisfaction. Instead, these institutions keep
replicating and refreshing those same myths of specialness (in either “conservative”
or “progressive” form), adding layer after layer of thought-obliterating noise
to the Great American Echo Chamber that encloses, and imprisons, the entire
society.
Mmm, maybe it’s not so heartening after all. Especially given the fact that
both factions are – literally, legally, formally, undeniably – packs of war
criminals, pledged to the continuation of a rapacious empire of military domination
that is killing innocent people, fomenting hatred and extremism, and destabilizing
the world. The myth of specialness prevents most people from seeing the truth
of what their bipartisan political establishment is doing to the world – or
even to themselves, how it has stripped them of their liberties, corroded their
society, destroyed their communities and degraded their quality of life, while
diminishing the lives and futures of their own children and grandchildren. Most
Americans apparently cannot break out of the narrow cognitive structure that
has been imposed on their understanding of reality: i.e., that America is inherently,
ineradicably good, that whatever mistakes it might make here or there (usually
when one’s own preferred faction is out of office, of course), this essential
goodness remains inviolate, forever untainted by any genuine evil.
Burns said he doesn't "recall ever having been the subject of such absolutely,
relentless vituperation" following a story in his 35 years at the Times.
He said his email inbox has been full of denunciations from readers and
a number of academics at top-tier schools such as Harvard, Yale, and MIT.
Some, he said, used "language that I don't think they would use at their
own dinner table."
This is really good to hear: quite encouraging. Apparently, many people become
quite angry when the newspaper which did more to enable the attack on Iraq than
any other media outlet in the world covered one of the most significant war
leaks in American history -- documents detailing the deaths of more than 100,000
human beings in that war and the heinous abuse of thousands of others -- by
assigning its most celebrated war correspondent and London Bureau Chief to studiously
examine and malign the totally irrelevant personality quirks, alleged mental
health, and various personal relationships of Julian Assange. Imagine that.
Then we have this from Burns:
Such heated reactions to the profile, Burns said, shows "just how embittered
the American discourse on these two wars has become."
Oh my, how upsetting. People are so very "embittered," and over what? Just
a couple of decade-long wars that have spilled enormous amounts of innocent
blood, devastated two countries for no good reason, and spawned a worldwide
American regime of torture, lawless imprisonment, and brutal occupation. It's
nothing to get upset over. People really need to lighten up. And stop being
so mean to John Burns. That's what really matters.
After all -- as
he himself told you just a couple of months ago -- there was just no way
that he and his war-supporting media colleagues -- holding themselves out as
preeminent, not-to-be-questioned experts on that country -- could possibly have
known that an attack on Iraq would have led to such devastating violence and
humanitarian catastrophe (except by listening to, rather than systematically
ignoring, the huge numbers of people around the world loudly warning that exactly
that could happen). The last thing he should have to endure are insulting emails
from people who seem to think that such episodes warrant anger and recrimination.
And that's to say nothing of the obvious irony of a reporter complaining about
our "embittered discourse" after he just wrote one of the sleaziest, most vicious
hit pieces seen in The New York Times in quite some time.
Then there's this:
The profile, Burns said, is "an absolutely standard journalistic
endeavor that we would use with any story of similar importance
in the United States" . . . . Burns added that the Times is "not
in the business of hagiography" but in the "business of giving
our readers the fullest context for these documents" and the Assange's motivations.
"To suggest that doing that is some kind of grotesque journalistic sin,
and makes me a sociopath," Burns said, "strikes me as pretty odd."
This is the heart of the matter. What Burns did to Julian Assange is most
certainly not a "standard journalistic endeavor" for The
New York Times. If anyone doubts that, please show me any article that paper
has published which trashed the mental health, psyche and personality of
a high-ranking American political or military official -- a
Senator or a General or a President or a cabinet secretary or even a prominent
lobbyist -- based on quotes from disgruntled associates of theirs. That is not
done, and it never would be.
This kind of character smear ("he's not in his right mind," pronounced a
25-year-old who sort of knows him) is reserved for people who don't matter in
the world of establishment journalists -- i.e., people without power
or standing in Washington and, especially, those whom American Government authorities
scorn. In official Washington, Assange is a contemptible loser --
the
Pentagon hates him and wants him destroyed, and therefore the "reporters"
who rely on, admire and identify with Pentagon officials immediately adopt that
perspective -- and that's why he was the target of this type of attack. After
I wrote my criticism of this article on Monday, I was contacted by Burns' co-writer,
Ravi Somaiya, who defended this article from my criticisms. I agreed to keep
the exchange off-the-record at his insistence -- and I will do so -- but that
was the question I kept asking: point to any instance where the NYT ever
subjected Someone Who Matters in Washington to this kind of personality and
mental health trashing based on the gossip and condemnation of associates. It
does not exist.
As for Burns' pronouncement that "the Times is 'not in the business of hagiography',"
he should probably
remind himself of what he himself wrote about the Right Honorable Gen. Stanely
McChrystal, after
Burns had attacked Michael Hastings for daring to publish the General's
own statements that reflected badly on him. Here's what Burns wrote while falling
all over himself in reverence of this Great American Warrior:
[A]ll that I know about General McChrystal suggests that he is, just
as the Rolling Stone article suggested, a maverick of high self-belief
and intensity, uncautioned in his disregard for the conventional, but for
all that a soldier with a deep belief in the military's ideals of "duty,
honor, country." Though handed what many would regard as a poisoned
chalice in the Afghanistan command, he had worked relentlessly to rescue
America’s fortunes there. . . . grave misfortune it is, considering
what is lost to America in a commander as smart, resolute and as fit for
purpose as General McChrystal . . . .
General George S. Patton Jr. . . . a man who was regarded at the time,
like General McChrystal in Afghanistan, as the best, and the toughest, of
America's war-fighting generals. . . . In Iraq, we barely glimpsed General
McChrystal, then running the super-secret special operations missions
that were crucial in turning the tide against Al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgency
under General Petraeus’s command; but he, too, continued the pattern of
access after he took command in Afghanistan in June 2009. . . .
Reporters, of course, do best when they keep their views to themselves,
to retain their impartiality. But it's safe to say that many of
the men and women who have covered General McChrystal as commander if Afghanistan,
or in his previous role as the top United States special forces commander,
admired him, and felt at least some unease about the elements in the Rolling
Stone article that ended his career.
It seems Burns wrote that while standing and saluting in front of a large
wall photograph of the General, or perhaps kneeling in front of it. The only
hint of a criticism was quite backhanded: that McCrystal "blundered catastrophically"
by failing to exercise sufficient caution when speaking to an Unestablished,
Unaccepted, reckless, low-level loser like Michael Hastings, who simply did
not know -- or refused to abide by -- the General-protecting rules that Real
Reporters use when veneratingcovering for
covering top military officials. And despite writing 2,700 praise-filled words
about McChrystal, Burns never once mentioned little things like his
central involvement in the Pat Tillman fraud or the widespread detainee abuse
in Iraq under his command, until a reader asked about it, and only then,
he mentioned it in passing to dismiss it. Burns' view of McChrystal is the very
definition of journalistic hagiography.
Or consider
this NYT profile of Gen. McChrystal by Elisabeth Bumiller and Mark
Mazzetti, after he was named to run the war in Afghanistan, that was more creepily
worshipful than any Us Weekly profile of a movie star whose baby pictures
they are desperate to publish. It goes on and on with drooling praise, but this
is how it begins:
Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ascetic who is set to become the
new top American commander in Afghanistan, usually eats just one meal a
day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness.
He is known for operating on a few hours’ sleep and for running to and
from work while listening to audio books on an iPod. In Iraq, where he oversaw
secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials
say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives
of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many
of them as possible.
But General McChrystal has also moved easily from the dark world to the
light. Fellow officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he is director,
and former colleagues at the Council on Foreign Relations describe him as
a warrior-scholar, comfortable with diplomats, politicians and the military
man who would help promote him to his new job.
"He's lanky, smart, tough, a sneaky stealth soldier," said Maj. Gen.
William Nash, a retired officer. "He’s got all the Special Ops attributes,
plus an intellect."
That article also never mentioned the issue of detainee abuse -- no need
to bother NYT readers with such unpleasantries about the Lanky Smart
Tough Warrior who will win Afghanistan -- while the Tillman incident was buried
in a paragraph near the end and dismissed as the "one blot on his otherwise
impressive military record." Remember, though: "the Times is 'not in the business
of hagiography'." Upon McChrystal's firing, the Hillman Foundation's Charles
Kaiser wrote
a comprehensive piece documenting how the "unspoken rules" cited by Burns
to attack Hastings were what led to widespread media protection and veneration
of McChrystal, as embodied by
the highly revealing though pernicious comments from CBS News' Lara Logan
("Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has").
"Hagiography" is exactly what the American establishment media does, when
it comes to powerful American political and military leaders. Slimy, personality-based
hit pieces are reserved for those who are scorned by the powerful in Washington
-- such as Julian Assange. So subservient to the Pentagon's agenda was the media
coverage of the WikiLeaked documents that even former high-level journalists
are emphatically objecting, and naming names. John Parker, former military reporter
and fellow of the University of Maryland Knight Center for Specialized Journalism-Military
Reporting, wrote
an extraordinarily good letter yesterday:
The sad lack of coverage ("Sunday talk shows largely ignore WikiLeaks'
Iraq files") of the leak of unfiltered, publicly owned information from
the latest WikiLeak is disturbing, but not historically out of the
ordinary for major American media.
The career trend of too many Pentagon journalists typically arrives at
the same vanishing point: Over time they are co-opted by a combination
of awe -- interacting so closely with the most powerfully romanticized
force of violence in the history of humanity -- and the admirable and seductive
allure of the sharp, amazingly focused demeanor of highly trained military
minds. Top military officers have their s*** together and it's personally
humbling for reporters who've never served to witness that kind of impeccable
competence. These unspoken factors, not to mention the inner pull of reporters'
innate patriotism, have lured otherwise smart journalists to abandon
– justifiably in their minds – their professional obligation to treat all
sources equally and skeptically.
Too many military reporters in the online/broadcast field have
simply given up their watchdog role for the illusion of being a part of
power. Example No. 1 of late is Tom Gjelten of NPR. . . Interviewed
by his colleague on Oct. 22 about the latest WikiLeaks documents, this exchange
happened:
__________
Robert Siegel: And reaction to the release today?
Gjelten: Well, the Pentagon is, understandably,
very angry, as they were when the documents from Afghanistan were
released. They said this decision to release them was made cavalierly. They
do point out - and I can't say I disagree (emphasis Parker's)
- that the period in Iraq that these documents covered was already very
well chronicled. They say it does not bring new understanding to those events.
___________
There it is in black and white. Gjelten is lending his credibility to
the Pentagon as "neutral" national journalist. . . . Gjelten, other Pentagon
journalists and informed members of the public would benefit from watching
"The Selling of the Pentagon," a 1971 documentary. It details how, in the
height of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon sophisticatedly used taxpayer money
against taxpayers in an effort to sway their opinions toward the Pentagon’s
desires for unlimited war. Forty years later, the techniques of
shaping public opinion via media has evolved exponentially.It has reached the point where flipping major journalists is a matter
of painting in their personal numbers.
Precisely. The Pentagon has
long
been devoted to destroying the credibility and reputation of WikiLeaks,
and the military-revering John Burns and his war-enabling newspaper, as usual,
lent its helping hand to the Government's agenda. This is what NPR's Gjelten
routinely does as well. The Pulitzer-Prize-winning David Cay Johnston, formerly
of the NYT,
wrote his own letter yesterday supporting Parker, citing the media's Pentagon-parroting
line (from Gjelten and others) that there is nothing new in the WikiLeaks documents,
and wrote: "If you want to ignore the facts or tell only the official
version of events get a job as a flack." That is the job they have,
only they're employed by our major media outlets. That's the principal problem.
They receive most of their benefits -- their access, their scoops, their sense
of belonging, their money, their esteem -- from dutifully serving that role.
Of course, another major reason why these media figures are so eager to parrot
the Government line -- to try to destroy Assange and insist that there's "nothing
new" in these horrifying documents -- is because they cheered for these wars
in the first place. The Washington Post's Editorial Page Editor, Fred
Hiatt, was one of the most vocal cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq, and so
predictably,
the Post (like NPR's Gjelten) ran an Editorial yesterday echoing
the Pentagon and belittling the WikiLeaks documents as Nothing New Here. If
that's true, perhaps Hiatt can point to the article where the Post previously
reported on
the existence of Frago 242, the secret order which instructed American troops
not to investigate Iraqi abuse, or perhaps he can explain why the Post's
own Baghdad Bureau Chief for much of the war, Ellen Knickmeyer,
finds plenty new in the WikiLeaks documents: "Thanks to WikiLeaks,
though, I now know the extent to which top American leaders lied, knowingly,
to the American public, to American troops, and to the world, as the Iraq mission
exploded."
Media figures like Burns, Gjelten, Hiatt and the NYT want you to think
there's nothing new in these documents, and to focus instead on Julian Assange's
alleged personality flaws (or
the prospects that he -- rather than the criminals he exposed -- should be prosecuted),
because that way they hope you won't notice all the blood on their hands. That's
one major benefit. The other is that they discharge their prime function of
currying favor with and serving the interests of the powerful Washington figures
whom they "cover."
* * * * *
There's one specific inaccuracy in Burns' response to me which I want to
highlight. The Yahoo! article states: "Burns took issue with Greenwald's
suggestion that he's 'a borderline-sociopath' who's now coping with the guilt
of having 'enabled and cheered' on the Iraq war." I didn't actually call Burns
that. What I wrote was that, in light of what these documents reveal, "even"
a borderline-sociopath would be awash with guilt over having supported this
war and would be eager to distract attention away from that -- by belittling
the importance of the documents and focusing instead on the messenger: Julian
Assange. In other words, there's only one category of people who would not feel
such guilt -- an absolute sociopath -- and I was generously assuming that Burns
was not in that category, which is why I would expect (and hope) that he is
driven by guilt over the war he supported. That's the most generous explanation
I can think of for why -- in the face of these startling, historic revelations
-- his journalistic choice was to pass on personality chatter about Assange.
UPDATE: The New York Times offered a feature
today -- "Ask The New York Times" -- where readers
can ask questions of the various reporters who worked on the WikiLeaks story.
The first two questions were about the criticisms I've voiced about that coverage
over the last few days (or at least the first question was: about
my critique of the substance of the NYT's coverage); the second question
was merely a general one about the reasons why the NYT published the
"hit piece" on Julian Assange, and Burns answered and took that opportunity
to "address" my criticisms specifically.
I don't have much to add to what either reporter said there, as I think my
critiques stand on their own, and I've already addressed most of the excuses
offered. I will, however, note two points: (1) one the cheapest,
most slothful and most intellectually dishonest methods for refuting an argument
is to mockingly slap the label of "conspiracy theory" on it, as though the argument
then becomes self-refuting; that's virtually always a non-responsive strawman,
and that's exactly what Burns does in purporting to address my criticisms even
though, manifestly, nothing I said qualifies as such; and (2)
it's a very significant -- and positive -- change even from a couple of years
ago that these reporters are not only loudly exposed to criticisms of their
work, but feel compelled to expend substantial efforts engaging them and responding.
As for John Burns' overarching mentality, consider what he said
on PBS' News Hour in July, after Gen. McChrystal had been fired,
about the lesson that should be learned from that episode: "I think we in the
press have to really look at cases like this and say, to what extent
can wechange the way we behave in such a way that this sort
of thing doesn't happen again?" If an Important and Great Man like
Gen. McChrystal ends up negatively affected as a result of truths uncovered
by a real journalist (Michael Hastings), then -- sayeth John Burns -- the media
must change its behavior, for that is the opposite of what it ought to be doing.
UPDATE II: I was just on a radio program with the
long-time journalist and media critic Norman Solomon, who said: "I was in Baghdad
before the invasion and spoke with Burns, and he was seriously eager to have
this invasion take place. And throughout the war, he constantly denounced the
behavior of Iraqi insurgents without ever applying the same human rights standards
to the American forces in Iraq."
Despite all that, Burns (of course) will be the first to insist that he's
a "neutral journalist," because to American establishment journalists, "neutrality"
means: "serving the interests of American political and military leaders and
amplifying their perspective." Think about it, though: if you were John Burns
and had this unrepentant pro-war record (or if you were the NYT and were
saddled with its war-enabling history), wouldn't you also be eager -- in the
face of these WikiLeaks revelations -- to urge everyone to look over there
at Julian Assange's personality traits, or what Iran was doing in Iraq, or anything
else you could think of to distract from the extraordinary human suffering and
mass death you helped unleash?
But today, as the United States ends combat in Iraq, it appears that our
$3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the
war's broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low. For
example, the cost of diagnosing, treating and compensating disabled veterans
has proved higher than we expected.
Moreover, two years on, it has become clear to us that our estimate did
not capture what may have been the conflict's most sobering expenses: those
in the category of "might have beens," or what economists call opportunity
costs. For instance, many have wondered aloud whether, absent the Iraq invasion,
we would still be stuck in Afghanistan. And this is not the only "what if"
worth contemplating. We might also ask: If not for the war in Iraq, would
oil prices have risen so rapidly? Would the federal debt be so high? Would
the economic crisis have been so severe?
There are some costs -- the harm that something like torture does to our
collective sense of morality for example -- that I have no idea how to evaluate.
WASHINGTON RULES
America’s Path to Permanent War
By Andrew J. Bacevich
In 1947, Hanson W. Baldwin, the hawkish military correspondent of this
newspaper, warned that the demands of preparing America for a possible war
would “wrench and distort and twist the body politic and the body economic
. . . prior to war.” He wondered whether America could confront the Soviet
Union “without becoming a ‘garrison state’ and destroying the very qualities
and virtues and principles we originally set about to save.”
It is that same dread of a martial America that drives Andrew J. Bacevich
today. Bacevich forcefully denounces the militarization that he says has
already become a routine, unremarked-upon part of our daily lives — and
will only get worse as America fights on in Afghanistan and beyond. He rips
into what he calls a postwar American dogma “so deeply embedded in the American
collective consciousness as to have all but disappeared from view.” “Washington
Rules” is a tough-minded, bracing and intelligent polemic against some 60
years of American militarism.
This outrage at a warlike America has special bite coming from Bacevich.
No critic of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could have brighter conservative
credentials. He is a blunt-talking Midwesterner, a West Point graduate who
served for 23 years in the United States Army, a Vietnam veteran who retired
as a colonel, and a sometime contributor to National Review. “By temperament
and upbringing, I had always taken comfort in orthodoxy,” he writes. But
George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003, Bacevich says, “pushed
me fully into opposition. Claims that once seemed elementary — above all,
claims relating to the essentially benign purposes of American power — now
appeared preposterous.”
From Harry S. Truman’s presidency to today, Bacevich argues, Americans
have trumpeted the credo that they alone must “lead, save, liberate and
ultimately transform the world.” That crusading mission is implemented by
what Bacevich caustically calls “the sacred trinity”: “U.S. military power,
the Pentagon’s global footprint and an American penchant for intervention.”
This threatening posture might have made some sense in 1945, he says, but
it is catastrophic today. It relegates America to “a condition of permanent
national security crisis.” ...
TigerPaw:
You need to add to the list of costs the current view of the US by people
of virtually all countries outside its borders. Except for the now rare
true believer, virtually everyone now assumes by default that the US is
*not* on the side of good - but rather that it is little different than
past military powers.
It's not a monetary cost as such, but it is real, and it is permanent.
A reputation once lost is almost impossible to recover.
Bruce Wilder:
MT: "There are some costs -- the harm that something like torture does
to our collective sense of morality for example -- that I have no idea how
to evaluate."
I'd put the decision to go to war -- including the political and propaganda
process by which democratic and international consent (or acquiescence)
was obtained -- falls into that same class. Maybe, as I think about it,
torture was just a small part of the whole "political strategy" of war.
We talk a lot about the dismantling of the New Deal, in discussing our
economic problems. But, Bush dismantled both the American mythos of war,
and the international order, largely created by FDR. Bush liked his bust
of Churchill, but he put his Iraq War in motion, with the vocabulary of
international diplomacy and international institutions, created by Roosevelt.
Where FDR wrote an epic, Bush wrote a farce.
The whole concept of the Iraq War by the Project for a New American Century
folks, was a Classics Comics version of the post-WWII order. "Look, we've
had bases in Germany and Japan for 60 years, and that's worked out well.
We could do the same thing in the Middle East and Central Asia, transforming
Iraq with an Occupation and Reconstruction, followed by permanent bases
forever. A New American Century!"
America is entertained by the extremism of the Right, but it is sick
at the center. Our elite simply has no idea how or why to do great things.
It is all bratty, ignorant children playing dress-up, with no sense of serious
consequence or cost. They end up doing horrific and destructive things and
have no sense of responsibility.
The U.S. attacked and invaded Iraq, without actual provocation of any
kind. That was a war crime -- less ambiguous, if possible, in its criminality,
than the torture that followed. But, put aside the moral outrage for a moment,
and simply consider, as dispassionately as possible, the quality of the
decision-making. Certainly, the disregard for the Laws of War mark the quality
of the decision-making -- don't disregard that -- but extend the assessment
to include the disregard, not just for law or high principle, but also for
just the prosaic need to plan or manage a huge undertaking. Consider the
worldview, that imagined that this policy could, somehow, make the world
"better".
Considering the costs and benefits to the chooser of the material consequences
doesn't really cover the case where the chooser has made himself incompetent
and unworthy with his choice and method of making it.
beezer:
All true enough. But I'm still skeptical of how we're going to do in Afghanistan.
The Soviets wasted a ton of money there, for 10 years, and it materially
contributed to the Soviet Union's collapse.
I don't think we can wrench
an entire country forward about a millenium. From their fifth century religion
to their tribal structure, they are a classic example of a country one wants
to avoid ruling.
We need to re-think our basic strategy. And we need to sharpen our tactics
to meet the specific challenges. Those four mph cruise missiles can't be
effectively dealt with by heavy armor. Unless you're willing to wipe out
entire regional populations and settle them yourself.
Antonio Conselheiro:
We shouldn't assume good will. Between them the freak 2000 election and
the 9/11 attack gave Bush, Cheney, and Rove an unprecedented one-time opportunity
to sabotage American democracy, make the US more authoritarian, put the
US more securely on a permanent war footing, and dismantle the welfare state.
Without using the c-word, at every point in the past there have been
individuals and groups who wanted to do all of these things (granted that
the welfare state only came into the equation after 1932.) That's what Goldwater's
backers wanted. That's what (some of) Roosevelt's opponents wanted.* That's
what the Straussians and the Chicago School wanted. Presumably that's what
many in the intelligence services and the military have wanted. And now
they've more or less got it.
This isn't much talked about, but who wins in a depression? Perhaps dollarwise
everyone loses, but relatively speaking some big players are destroyed or
crippled whereas others come out in a relatively better position than they'd
started in. (Perhaps they're multinational and have no particular interest
in the American economy as such.)
*In fairness, some of Roosevelt's supporters were authoritarian and militarist
when some of his opponents were not. But the welfare state had bitter enemies
long before it had even come into being.
Sux2BU:
What-if's are meaningless. What if, the US finished the job in 1991?
What if we didn't abandon our allies to the slaughter? What if UN Sanctions
didn't kill 50,000 Iraqis. What's Saddam Sons took power? What if you never
existed? You Saddam supporters make me sick.
TigerPaw:
Who said we supported Saddam?
By the way ... there are other nasty fellows in the world too. What's
your schedule for invading those countries? Zimbabwe, Sudan, North Korea
all come to mind as good places to go next.
Better hurry up, bad things are happening and you wouldn't want someone
to think you support those naughty fellows would you?
not_an_american:
And you forgot to mention Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Turkmenistan etc.
Oh wait those are our close allies...my bad.
America is a morally bankrupt pariah state. I am enjoying its social
and economic implosion tremendously.
Got popcorn?
Observer:
"Earlier today, I ordered Americas armed forces to strikemilitary and security
targets in Iraq. They are joined byBritish forces.
Their mission is to attack Iraqs nuclear,chemical and biological weapons
programs and its militarycapacity to threaten its neighbors. Their purpose
is to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the
interests of people throughout theMiddle East and around the world.
Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world
with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons. "
MONTPELIER, Vt. — Fed up that Washington hasn’t done more to end the war,
a group of Vermont lawmakers said Tuesday that the president no longer has the
authority to use Guard troops in Iraq.
State Rep. Michael Fisher, D-Lincoln, said the authority to call up Guard
members for Iraq duty has expired because that country no longer poses a threat
to U.S. national security.
“The mission authorized in 2002 does not exist,” said Fisher, who plans to
introduce a bill backed by 30 colleagues Wednesday that calls on Gov. Jim Douglas
to join the effort. “Unless Congress grants a new authorization, the Vermont
Guard should revert back to state control.”
Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin said the Senate would take up similar
legislation.
“Bottom line is, if the politicians in Washington aren’t going to do the
right thing for our troops, let’s do the right thing by bringing our Vermont
Guard members home,” he said. “If Vermont can make one small step forward, I
believe others will follow.”
A Douglas spokesman said the governor can’t stop the use of Guard troops
in the war.
“It’s clear that’s there’s no legal basis for stopping the federalization
of the National Guard when Congress has authorized and continues to fund a war,”
said Douglas’ spokesman Jason Gibbs. “The bottom line is this is a federal issue.”
He said Douglas would rather see Congress develop an exit strategy to bring
the troops home as soon as possible.
Maj. Gen. Michael Dubie, head of the Vermont National Guard, refused to comment
until he could read the bill.
Fisher said similar proposals were being considered
by lawmakers in Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island
“Most of us standing here, maybe all of us, have made objections in the past
about the morality or wisdom of this war,” Fisher said. “Today, we are limiting
ourselves to one vital principle: the rule of law.”
“Questions about whether the war is going well or the surge is going well,
should be left for other days,” he added. “We have a special interest in the
welfare of the Vermont National Guard.”
anne:
A question that I wish were asked repeatedly is given American military spending
just how much of a limit on development is it? *
The Economic Impact of the Iraq War and Higher Military Spending By Dean
Baker
Executive Summary
There has been relatively little attention paid to the Iraq War's impact
on the U.S. economy. It is often believed that wars and military spending increases
are good for the economy. This is not generally true in most standard economic
models. In fact, most models show that military spending diverts resources from
productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic
growth and reduces employment.
In order to get an approximation of the economic impact of the recent increase
in military spending associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Center
for Economic and Policy Research commissioned Global Insight to run a simulation
with its macroeconomic model. It produced a simulation of the impact of an increase
in annual U.S. military spending equal to 1 percent of GDP, approximately the
actual increase in spending compared with the pre-war budget. We selected the
Global Insight model for this analysis because it is a commonly used and widely
respected model. Global Insight produced a set of
projections that compared a scenario with an increase in annual military spending
equal to 1.0 percent of GDP (current about $135 billion) relative to its baseline
scenario. This is approximately equal to the increase in defense
spending that has taken place compared with the pre-September 11th baseline.
The projections show that....
anne:
Basic military spending, where is the limit and are we already doing considerable
harm to our economy in so spending?
Heritage Foundation’s Rant against Reductions to the War Machine:
Talking points aired on 14 Aug 2010 AM session of C-SPAN TV.
US warfare spending will decline to 3% of GDP by 2019. As if that is a problem.
GDP is meaningless, especially when you see the tiny threats that the large
percent of US GDP is supposed to address, and doing it very badly.
The figure that should be explained is what UK and Germany spend as percent
of government outlays, aside from real reasons to have a war machine, a better
measure than GDP. That they won’t go there reflects the fear that if the US
citizen saw how little the Europeans spend the rational question is “what do
they see about security challenges differently than the US”? The UK spends about
7% of outlays on “defence” while the US spends nearly 20% (just a bit less than
SS outlays). What is wrong with this picture?
'Rise of Peer Competitors' is invoked, the wish (unsubstantiated) that 'some
other country would spend as counterpoint to the US' does not make the reality
test: double digit increases in China and Russia are on the order of $5-6B US
a year, as if that could equate to the $1.6 T backlog (GAO
09-326SP) in the US in the 95 top investments the DoD is spending, all running
late and 19% over original cost estimates, and not tested. However, if the US
does not spend the trillions better it is likely a $50B annual defense increase
will keep it at bay. (What is the GDP of the Taliban)?
But the push for austerity is now on the 'cat food for oldsters commission'
train, and the drive is to attack human resources costs as too high and/or identify
the need to cut retiree and dependent health care and pensions so that more
money can be added to the overruns described annually by GAO. A department
that cannot afford retiree health benefits must pay for huge fraud, and waste
in its weapon procurement. Heritage does not think the US needs to worry about
military retirees because only 20% of the force will get to retirement? Nice
calculation for the personnel who do the fighting.
That most of equipment is from the 1970’s is an obviously false and cheeky
comment and used to justify spending. The reason is twofold: first none of it
is needed for the US without military peer competitors, and second the replacements
are not needed the money is wasted in an inept welfare system that keeps incompetent
ideas from and the money chasing after failures and not terminating in an orderly
fashion. See such programs as the MV 22, F 22, B2, C 17 Littoral Combat Ships,
San Antonio Class…. The list is long and the failure to actually replace hardware
is less about stingy appropriation than ineptitude in the military industrial
complex, which is paid well for the second or third failed attempt to
build replacements for 1970’s (proposed against the Soviets by the way).
The US DOD should get less than 10% of US budget, and then carefully reduced
to less than 5%.
We spend nearly a trillion dollars a year on defense related items. All
supposedly so that we can sleep nights secure in the notion we're relatively
safe from harm. Yet the construction of a mosque in Manhatten is the first
domino in the downfall of our republic. Maybe we spend a billion stopping
the mosque construction and kick in the remaining 999 billion towards the
deficit? Why bust our budget so that the citizens of South Korea, Japan,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Western Europe, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, etc can divert
their defense money to other uses knowing we'll spend ourselves silly defending
their soil? Let's see how they cope spending 20% of their receipts on weapons
and soldiers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Courtesy Wikipedia:
For the 2010 fiscal year, the president's base budget of the Department
of Defense rose to $533.8 billion. Adding spending on "overseas contingency
operations" brings the sum to $663.8 billion.[1][2]
When the budget was signed into law on October 28, 2009, the final size
of the Department of Defense's budget was $680 billion, $16 billion more
than President Obama had requested.[3] An additional $37 billion supplemental
bill to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was expected to pass in
the spring of 2010, but has been delayed by the House of Representatives
after passing the Senate.[4][5] Defense-related expenditures outside of
the Department of Defense constitute between $216 billion and $361 billion
in additional spending, bringing the total for defense spending to between
$880 billion and $1.03 trillion in fiscal year 2010.[6]
jimBOB
While I agree that the bloated defense budget is an obvious target for
cutting, I doubt that doing so means the rest of the developed world needs
to respond by ramping up their own military spending. In the case of western
Europe, there's no Soviet tanks waiting to roll, and they're not about to
invade each other. South Korea's defense isn't the token armed forces stationed
there, it's the credible threat of nuclear retaliation (which is cheap compared
to a big troop presence). I don't know who Japan needs to defend itself
against, since the only country with significant amphibious assault capability
is the U.S. Israel is already an armed camp. Turkey has plenty of defense
capability. Egypt's only credible military menace is probably Israel, and
we buy them off with aid rather than military protection anyway. Iraq and
Afghanistan's main problem is internal division rather than a threat of
external invasion.
On a larger point that I think hasn't really sunk in, our recent Iraqi
and Afghan adventures have demonstrated the complete futility of armed invasions
in the 21st century. The U.S., arguably the greatest military power the
world has ever seen, with a military machine unrivaled anywhere in the world,
launched in the past decade two invasions, one of an insignificant dust
bowl and the other of a smallish near-developed country. Both have turned
into quagmires in which the occupier hemorrhaged money to essentially no
purpose.
The obvious lesson is that invading countries doesn't bring an advantage
in the modern context. Building a large military to guard against invasion
is pointless since there's no longer a good reason for anybody to try invading
anymore.
steve duncan :
I agree other nations may be just as deluded as us concerning external
threats and the consequent (perceived) need to therefore be an armed camp.
It's just that now we shoulder some or most of that burden. Whether the
threats are real or imagined let them prepare for the threats as they see
fit, out of their coffers. The U.S. Congress haggles with the military and
executive branch over the necessity of producing 75 fighter jets at 500
million a copy, two or three destroyers at 3 billion each and dozens of
other boondoggles and pet projects. Yet suggesting those are cut as opposed
to handing the top 1% of wage earners a 1/4 trillion in tax cuts is heresy.
If we go bust it's something we richly deserve. Of course should we enter
a true cataclysmic depression it'll all be blamed on Islam and Democrats.
The former therefore deserving nuclear annihilation and the latter various
forms of figurative or actual lynchings.
Flylab1:
"the deficit cannot be paid for with taxes. Any kind of taxes."
And yet, according to the GOP, the deficit *can* be paid for with tax
cuts.
jimBOB:
Yeah, let's target for taxation the sector of the society that barely
makes a subsistence income, while ignoring the small elite which hauls in
a vastly disproportionate share of national income. Good plan, Shooter.
Shooter242:
So half the country lives on subsistence income? Really?
Of course not. Strike One.
Is the small elite earning a large share of the income is ignored?
Of course not. The top 1% pays 30% of all fed personal taxes (yes, including
SS) while making 19% of the income pie. Strike two.
Should half the country make absolutely no contribution to income taxes?
That's a lot of free riders, Jim Bob. Obviously you're not that worried
about the deficit. That's strike three, and you're out of here.
I’m surprised a thoughtful guy like Glenn Greenwald would make such an
unsubstantiated link between collapsing public services for American peasants
and a collapse of America’s global (indirect) imperial realm.
Is there really a historic link between the
quality of a nation’s services to its citizens and its global power?
If so the Scandinavian countries would have been ruling the world for the
past fifty years. If anything there is probably
a reverse correlation. None of the great historic imperial
powers, such as the British, Roman, Spanish, Russian, Ottoman, Mongolian,
Chinese, Islamic, or Persian, were associated with egalitarian living conditions
for anyone outside of the elite. So from a historic point of view, the ability
to divert resources away from the peasants and towards the national security
state is a sign of elite power and should be seen as a sign increased American
imperial potential.
Now if America’s global power was still based on economic production
then an argument could be made that closing libraries and cancelling the
12th grade would lower America’s power potential. But as we all know that
is no longer the case and now America’s power is as the global consumer
of excess production. Will a dumber peasantry consume even more? I think
there is a good chance that the answer is yes.
Now a limit could be reached to how far the elite can lower their
peasant’s standard of living if these changes actually resulted in civil
disorder that demanded much energy for American elites to quell.
But so far that is far from the case. Even a facile gesture such as voting
for any other political party except the ruling Republicrats seems like
a bridge too far for 95% of the peasants to attempt. No, the sad truth is
that American elites, thanks to their exceptional ability to deliver an
ever increasing amount of diverting bread and circuses, have plenty of room
to further cut standards of living and are nowhere near reaching any limits.
What the reductions in economic and educational options will result in
are higher quality volunteers into America’s security machinery, which again
obviously raise America’s global power potential. This, along with an increasingly
ruthless elite, should assure that into the medium term America’s powerful
position will remain unchallenged. If one colors in blue on a world map
all the countries under de facto indirect US control then one will start
to realize the extent of US power. The only major countries outside of US
control are Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela. Iraq and Afghanistan
are recent converts to the blue column but it far from certain whether they
will stay that way. American elites will resist to the bitter end any country
falling from the blue category. But this colored world map is the best metric
for judging US global power.
In the end it’s just wishful thinking to link the declining of the American
peasant’s standard of living with a declining of the American elite’s global
power. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this proven in an attack on Iran in
the near future.
Ina Deaver:
But the elite can really only project power to the extent that the peasantry
are compliant, right? Surely you don’t dispute that. Fodder are needed for
the cannons, and rioting and unrest at home distract from international
aspirations. I think that the Soviets proved
conclusively that, if you focus exclusively on power at the expense of social
stability, even a peasantry used to being brutalized will tolerate you only
so far. Indeed, the Russians have proved that a number of times.
If he’s pointing out that the situation for normal people is getting
ridiculous, I agree. If he’s pointing out that projecting force into Afghanistan
while we shut own libraries and schools is incredibly short-sighted and
stupid, I agree. If he’s pointing out that it looked a whole lot like this
when Rome started going south, I agree. If he’s pointing out that a strong
power an manage to keep its people provisioned while projecting force –
again, I have a hard time disagreeing. Just because the Scandanavians don’t
(this century) spend a lot of time on empire doesn’t make him wrong.
kevin de bruxelles:
But the elite can really only project power to the extent that the
peasantry are compliant, right?
I addressed that in the third paragraph: “Now a limit could be reached
to how far the elite can lower their peasant’s standard of living if these
changes actually resulted in civil disorder that demanded much energy for
American elites to quell.”
In my opinion one cannot start to talk about imperial decline until at
least some instability on the part of the US peasantry is shown. So far
there is none.
Fodder are needed for the cannons, and rioting and unrest at home
distract from international aspirations
Again I addressed this by stating: “What the reductions in economic and
educational options will result in are higher quality volunteers into America’s
security machinery, which again obviously raise America’s global power potential.”
My point is that so far the reductions to the standard of living have
had no negative impact at all on America’s global situation. And given the
realities of American life and the ability of elites to control the conversation,
the cuts will need to go much deeper before any impact is felt. So it is
way too early for anyone to start declaring mission accomplished on the
end of American global power. Things are not
going to change until the day change is forced upon the elite from below.
And from what I see we are unfortunately decades away from that point.
Bates:
Kevin… I agree with many of your comments but
I think a closer look is needed at why ‘the American peasants’ are
unlikely to react violently to government actions; ie, closing libraries,
canceling 12th grade, etc.
Political and public relations (advertising) pollsters learned long ago
that how people respond to polls is not necessarily how they will vote with
their ballot or with their pocketbook. Since 51 million Americans receive
Social Security benefits, over 40 million Americans receive food stamps,
2,949,130 are employed directly by the fed gov (as of 2008 and including
Homeland Security), state and local governments employ 14,857,827 full time
employees and 4,834,978 part time employees (as of Dec 2009).
http://www.census.gov/govs/apes/
How many more Americans are employed by the US Military, direct contractors,
defense contractors, ad infinum? I don’t know…but it’s a big number.
All these government employed Americans,
and Americans on the dole, are not likely to vote to have their rice bowl
broken. Many millions more Americans depend on the spending
of the direct government employees, and subsidized Americans, for their
livelyhood and they are unlikely to vote to have their rice bowls broken.
Would it be outside the realm of possibility
to say half of the American population is directly or indirectly dependent
on government employment or subsidy?
Who is left to rock the boat? The medical industry? The financial industry…including
insurance? The real estate industry (lol about that one)? The auto industry?
Big agriculture? Just about any business you can name is in some way influenced
by government payrolls either directly or indirectly or by government subsidies.
In US elections 51% of the vote will carry the day for the winner. Are
the ‘American peasants’ going to vote for their ‘core beliefs’, for a return
to strict Constitutional Government and sound money, or for the continuation
of their dole?
One last point. I noticed that you left France off the list of empires
past although France was at various times a powerful empire. The lesson
taught by the peasants of France was so brutal, and so frightening to the
remaining aristocracies of the world, that it is not forgotten to this day…Do
not forget to deliver the bread!
DownSouth:
Bates,
Yours is the lament of the elite, a fear of democracy, and a constant refrain
we’ve heard from the rich ever since the days of the American Revolution.
Here’s how the historian Lance Banning put it:
Much of the American elite shared Madison’s alarm with the “abuses
of republican liberty practised in the states.” Many, maybe most, defined
the problem as a classic crisis of relationships between the many and the
few, creditor and debtors, rich and poor: a crisis generated by what Elbridge
Gerry called “an excess of democracy.”
–Lance Banning, “Madison, the Statute, and Republic Convictions”
But the truth is that the alarms sounded by the rich have never materialized,
have they? In fact, if anything, wresting power
from the plutocrats, even in a democracy, has always been an uphill struggle.
Many have theorized as to why this is so. “The stupidity of the average
man will permit the oligarch, whether economic or political, to hide his
real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows and to withdraw his activities
from effective control,” Reinhold Niebuhr suggested.
But perhaps it was Madison who best articulated why your fear of the
majority, or the “51% of the vote” as you put it, is unfounded. Madison
observed that the body of the people do not naturally divide into two polar
points, such as the many and the few, but into a plurality of groups whose
multiplex variety can pose a stubborn obstacle to the success of any partial
interest. The “only defense against the inconveniences of democracy consistent
with the democratic form of government,” Madison argued, was to
divide the community into so great a number of interests and parties
that, in the first place, a majority will not be likely at the same moment
to have a common interest separate from that of the whole or of the minority,
and in the second place, that in case they should have such an interest,
they may not be apt to unite in the pursuit of it.
–James Madison, speech of June 6, 1787
Have you not noticed how well the oligarchy plays this game? It labors
constantly to pit black against white, public union against private union,
black and white against brown, union against non-union, Jew against Gentile,
middle-class against working-class, and so forth.
And I find it confusing why you put forth the argument you do at a time
when the oligarchy is enjoying almost unprecedented power.
attempter:
Just over a week ago I wrote something on this dubious (at best) aspect
of Madison’s ideology.
This is a recipe for disaster, as they should’ve known even in 1787-8.
A clue to the federalist pathology is how they’re constantly saying it’s
the peasant majority who threatens the minority of their economic and alleged
social betters; how the real threat of tyranny is from the bottom up. But
even then it was the fact that throughout history tyranny had almost always
come from the top down, the power elites oppressing the majority.
And so it has been though American history. Whatever Madison’s intent,
we can read this only one way today. Since at least the latter 19th century,
the whole trend of US history, radically accelerating over the last 40 years,
has been a double assault according to Madison’s prescription in #51, but
inverting his proclaimed intent.
1. The elites have constructed the corporate will outside society, as
a predator against it, as the vehicle of class war upon it.
2. At the same time they’ve sought to atomize the people, to dissolve
all social, economic, and political bonds so that each individual stands
naked, confused, demoralized, and alone before the awesome corporate power.
This puts the “anarchy” passage in perspective. Here Madison drops the
misdirection of playing off the terms “majority” and “minority” against
one another and substitutes the more ecumenical “stronger” vs. “weaker”.
Now when we read this it becomes clear that the predator minority is ”the
strong”, while the vast majority of the people are expected to be the weak.
Bates:
DownSouth… I agree with you that ‘divide and conquer (or rule)’ is at
work in America and elsewhere. However, you seem to disregard that the number
of Americans on the dole is an obstacle for the ‘American peasants’ to take
some affirmative action to bring to heel the worst offenders in the criminal
conspiracy consisting of Wall St, DC and the central banks of the West (and
some in the East). It is obvious that divide and rule is at work but in
addition there is the fact that a large portion of Americans are on the
dole. There is nothing to stop the elite from using a variety of tactics
and that is precisely what they are are about when they use ‘divide and
rule’ and ‘co-option by dole’.
BTW, ‘lament’ is not an apt description of my post. It is your word and
does not convey the same meaning as ‘observations’, which is exactly what
my comments were. To lament is to grieve or protest loudly and bitterly.
I notice that you often add words or entire sentences to other’s posts when
responding to them. This is a cheap trick and discredits your own comments
and posts.
“But perhaps it was Madison who best articulated why your fear of the
majority, or the “51% of the vote” as you put it, is unfounded.”
Once again you drift off into fantasy land. I have no ‘fear of the majority’.
My observation was that so many Americans are on the dole that it is unlikely
that they will vote against their self interests and in favor of restoration
of strict constitutional government and sound money. Perhaps Madison had
a fear of the majority…Hey, just because he was paranoid did not mean that
the majority was not out to get him. Of course people are not rational and
people act irrationally often…so, it is not impossible that they will vote
(or take action) against their own self interest.
“Have you not noticed how well the oligarchy plays this game? It labors
constantly to pit black against white, public union against private union,
black and white against brown, union against non-union, Jew against Gentile,
middle-class against working-class, and so forth.”
Yes, I have noticed divide and rule. Have you failed to notice that ~
one half of all Americans in some manner feeding at the trough of American
governments is also a stumbling block to ‘American peasants’ taking action
toward reform?
“And I find it confusing why you put forth the argument you do at a time
when the oligarchy is enjoying almost unprecedented power.”
Oh, I don’t think you are confused. I think that you do not want ‘American
peasantry’ to realize how much they rely on American governments for their
daily bread. Or, as Shakespeare said… ‘Methinks thou dost protest too much”.
Valissa:
Well said… props to you and Kevin dB for your thoughtful contributions
to the conversation. That is why I read this blog. I enjoy learning about
the world. I do not enjoy political opinionating much, even when I agree
with it. As far as I am concerned, most political
opinionating (left and right) is just whining that the world is not how
you want it to be and blaming the other team for current misfortunes…
and cheap digs is a big part of that. To use sports language, most political
types, IMO, are “poor sports.”
It’s alot of work to study history, anthropology, sociological trends
and related subjects in order to try and understand why the world is the
way it is. It’s much easier to parrot the memes of your political belief
group and emotionally and self-righteously ride on the shared agreements
and disagreements that brings.
Kevin de Bruxelles:
Bates,
I think you articulate well the reasons Americans are still loath to
turn on the system. And from the elite point
of view the strategy will be to turn up the propaganda emphasis in order
to leverage the people’s perceived dependency on the system while paradoxically
cutting this dependency by hacking away at America’s welfare state and transferring
this wealth to among other things the national security state.
Groups seen as potential threats to stability will probably suffer fewer
cuts than those groups seen as less of a civil threat, such as the elderly.
Of course I’m not cheerleading this process but one cannot fight something
that one doesn’t understand.
I’m not sure why I left France off that list. While France’s imperial
failures in the 18th century may have played a very minor role in creating
the situation that triggered their revolution, less than 15 years later
there was a French Emperor ruling over a very impressive European empire.
Later after this empire was lost on the retreat from Moscow; the French
again built up their colonial empire in Indochine, North Africa, and eventually
sub-Saharan Africa as well. What is interesting is that France lost this
empire during the “Trente Glorieuses” (1947-1974) during which time the
French saw explosive economic growth and a huge increase in their standard
of living. While this doesn’t prove anything it is another example of how
global power does not necessarily follow the direction of internal economic
events.
EmilianoZ:
I think you have a point. Unfortunately one should never underestimate
the stupidity of the populace.
The most depressing of all: we have this belief that education makes
us better, but what I’ve noticed is that a college
degree even from a reputedly good university doesn’t give you more critical
sense. Most, in fact all the college educated people I know
still believe there’s a profound difference between republicans and democrats
and that voting for a 3rd party is useless. I stopped arguing with them.
They only look at me as if I were some conspiracy theory parrot.
michelisbanned:
Kevin, surely that is not the real problem? The argument is not, or should
not be, that to survive and prosper, empires have to provide either equality
or services. The argument ought to be that in
the end, imperial power is only supportable by economic productivity. When
this declines, when economies become uncompetitive, often because of imperial
overstretch, then the empire declines.
We saw this in modern times in Spain during the eighty years war. We
saw it in the case of the UK in the early 20C. We saw it in Russia in the
late 20C. We may be seeing it now in the US. The US may simply not have
enough money to spend on the weapons that are required, may not be able
to keep up with the growing economies that will be its rivals.
If this is happening, then one of the first signs might be that the living
standards and employment levels of working Americans fall. Recall the twenties.
This was a period in which the British Empire was still imperial, but in
which the standard of living in the UK was falling behind, and in which
other economies had passed it in productivity. Flash back to WWI. Then a
large part of the success of the UK was its ability to out produce Germany.
Go forward to WWII, and that edge had vanished.
It may be that the same thing is happening to the US. If so, critical
as you all are of the US Government, its direction and state, this is really
disturbing news for the West. The US is the only real power in the West.
If the US is in imperial decline, then we are all in trouble. And if we
do not like the US, just look at the alternatives. The US is awful, until
you look at the alternatives….
purple:
A balance of power is pretty much impossible in a capitalist world-system,
because of the struggle for markets, etc. The system works ‘best’ when there
is a hegemon keeping order. The problem is the US no longer can afford to
keep order; it can’t sustain reserve currency status because of collapsing
competitiveness in production and failed military occupations are bleeding
the country dry.
michelisbanned…
“The argument is not, or should not be, that to survive and prosper,
empires have to provide either equality or services. The argument ought
to be that in the end, imperial power is only supportable by economic productivity.
When this declines, when economies become uncompetitive, often because of
imperial overstretch, then the empire declines.”
Can we please keep in mind that first and foremost an empire is a business
model?
In days of yore empires were in your face businesses. IOWs they did not
attempt to obscure the fact that they were an empire…in fact, they gloried
in being empires. Remember, ‘The sun never sets on the British empire’,
was spoken with pride!
Let’s take the British empire for an example. The brits sent out their
navy and army to conquer foreign lands and then sent in well trained bureaucrats
to set up very efficient systems to milk the conquered lands. A simple example:
cotton from India was shipped to GB to be spun into cloth and sometimes
made into finished goods…which was then sold back to India and other countries
for a value added profit for GB. Little thought was given to the sweat shops
and their laborers in the mills of GB and even less to the Indians that
grew and picked the cotton in India. The labor in both countries worked
in miserable and dangerous conditions and lived in squalid conditions. But,
GB was a money making empire for some time.
This is one example of an empire that did not care what the laborers thought
or offer any safety net for the injured, old or ill.
Rome had a similar model to GB and once the gold and other treasure was
taken back to Rome the populace of the conquered were allowed to lead somewhat
normal lives as long as they paid a tax (grain, etc) to Rome each year.
Think about the business model of GB’s empire or Rome’s empire compared
to the US empire of today… The US spends an
enormous amount of dollars maintaining military outposts around the world
and fighting wars in several countries. Where is the profit
in the US model? Is it in the embedded in the 12 million barrels of oil
the US imports each day? Is it embedded in world dollar hegemony? Is it
embedded in the US financial sector that has global reach? Or, from other
sources that are obscure…like printing large quantities of treasury paper
that other countries accept for their products in exchange for protection
offered by the US Military? I am curious about what other posters have to
say about US profits from empire.
In the eight years I've reported on Afghanistan, I've "embedded" regularly with
Afghan civilians, especially women. Recently, however, with American troops
"surging" and journalists getting into the swing of the military's counter-insurgency
"strategy" (better known by its acronym, COIN), I decided to get with the program
as well. In June, I filed a request to embed with the US Army.
Polite e-mails from army public affairs specialists ask journalists to provide
evidence of medical insurance, a requirement I took as an admission that war
is not a healthy pursuit. I already knew that, of course - from the civilian
side.
Plus I'd read a lot of articles and books by male colleagues who had risked
their necks with American Afghanistan. What struck me about their work was this:
even when they described screw-ups coming down from the top brass, those reporters
still managed to make the soldierly enterprise sound pretty consistently heroic.
I wondered what they might be leaving out.
So I sent in a scan of my Medicare card. I worried that this evidence of
my senior citizenship, coupled with my membership in the "weaker sex", the one
we're supposedly rescuing in Afghanistan, would raise questions about my fitness
for missions "outside the wire" of a Forward Operating Base (FOB, pronounced
"fob") in eastern Afghanistan only a few miles from the tribal areas of Pakistan.
But no, I got my requested embed - proof of neither fitness nor heroism required
(something my male colleagues had never revealed). In the end, my age and gender
were no handicap. As Agatha Christie's Miss Marple knows, people will say almost
anything to an old lady they assume to be stupid.
Boys and their toys
Having been critical of American policies from the get-go, I saw nothing on
the various army bases I visited to change my mind. One day at that FOB, preparing
to go on a mission, the sergeant in charge wrote the soldiers' names on the
board, followed by "Terp" to designate the Afghan-American interpreter who would
accompany us, and "In Bed," which meant me.
He made a joke about reporters who are more gung-ho than soldiers. Not me.
And I wasn't alone. I had already met a lot of older guys on other bases, mostly
reservists who had jobs at home they felt passionately about - teachers, coaches,
musicians - and wives and children they loved, who just wanted to go home. One
said to me, "Maybe if I were 10 years younger I could get into it, but I'm not
a boy anymore."
The army had sent me a list of ground rules for reporters - mostly commonsense
stuff like don't print troop strength or battle plans. I also got a checklist
of things to bring along. It was the sort of list moms get when sending their
kids off to camp: water bottle, flashlight, towel, soap, toilet paper (for those
excursions away from base), sleeping bag, etc. But there was other stuff too:
ballistic eyewear, fireproof gloves, big knife, body armor and Kevlar helmet.
Considering how much of my tax dollar goes to the Pentagon, I thought the army
might have a few spare flak jackets to lend to visiting reporters, but no, you
have to bring your own.
That was perhaps a sign of things to come, as I was soon swamped by complaints
from soldiers and civilian contractors alike: not enough armor, not enough vehicles,
not enough helicopters, not enough weapons, not enough troops - and even when
there seemed to be plenty of everything, complaints that nothing was of quite
the right kind.
This struck me as a peculiarly privileged American problem that seemed to
underlie almost everything I was to see on the eastern front of this war. Those
complaints, in fact, seemed to spring from the very nature of the American military
enterprise - from its toxic mix of paranoia, entitlement and good intentions.
Take the paranoia, which I suppose comes with the territory. You wouldn't
be there if you didn't think that there were enemies all around. I turned down
a military flight for the short hop from the Afghan capital Kabul to Bagram,
the main American base - a rapidly expanding "city" of more than 30,000 people.
Instead, I asked an Afghan friend to drive me out in his car.
A public affairs officer warned me that driving was "very dangerous", but
the only problem we met was a US military convoy headed in the opposite direction,
holding up traffic. For more than an hour we sat by the highway with dozens
of Afghan motorists watching a parade of enormous flatbed trucks hauling other
big vehicles: bulldozers and armored personnel carriers of various vintages
from Humvees to MRAPs (mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles). My friend
said, "We don't understand. They have all these big machines. They put them
on trucks and haul them up and down the road. Why?"
I couldn't get an answer, but I got a clue when I took an army chopper from
Bagram to a smaller base and met a private contractor partly responsible for
army vehicle maintenance. He gave me a CD to pass onto his foreman at the FOB
I was headed for. Rather than music, it held an instruction manual for repairing
the latest model M-ATV, a hulking personnel carrier with a V-shaped hull designed
to repel the blast of roadside bombs.
These are currently replacing the older MRAPs and deadly low-slung Humvees.
The Humvees are, in turn, being passed off to the Afghan National Army, whose
soldiers are more expendable than ours. (You see what I mean about entitlement.)
Standing in a lot full of new M-ATVs already in need of fixing, the foreman
seemed pleased indeed to get that CD.
It's a measure of our sense of entitlement, I think, that while the Taliban
and their allies still walk to war wearing traditional baggy cotton pants and
shirts, we Americans incessantly invent things to make ourselves more "secure".
Since no one can ever be secure, least of all in war, every new development
is bound to prove insufficient and is almost guaranteed to create new problems.
Still, Americans feel entitled to safety. Hence the MRAP was designed to
address a double whammy of fear: roadside bombs (improvised explosive devices
- IEDs) and ambushes. I was trained to be a passenger in an MRAP for a mission
that never materialized, but in the process I learned where the built-in handholds
are for those frequent occasions when the top-heavy MRAP rolls down a mountainside.
The trainer talked so assuredly about what to do in case of a rollover that
he almost gave me the impression you could swivel your hips and right the vehicle,
like a kayak. But no, once it rolls, it's a goner. You have to crawl out and
walk. (So much for ambush protection.) Then, one of those big trucks we saw
on the highway to Bagram has to come out and haul it back to base, where the
foreman with that new instruction-manual CD may have a go at fixing it.
That, in a nutshell, is why the seven-passenger MRAP is being replaced by
the five-passenger M-ATV, a huge armored all-terrain vehicle not quite so inclined
to tip over. Because it holds fewer soldiers, however, you have to put more
of those vehicles on the road, and I'm sure you already see where that leads.
One benefit of our addiction to expensive, state-of-the-art stuff, however
faulty it may prove, is that the private manufacture of armaments now helps
keep our economy on life support and makes some military-industrial types rich.
One drawback is that - though it's a hard point for American soldiers in
the line of fire to grasp - it actually undercuts our heralded COIN strategy.
Afghans out there fighting in their cotton pajamas take Western reliance on
heavy armor as a measure of our fear - not to mention the inferiority of our
gods on whose protection we appear unwilling to rely. (By contrast, the watchman
at the small Afghan National Army base adjacent to the FOB I was visiting slept
on a cot on the roof, exposed to enemy fire with his tea kettle beside him,
either trusting his god, or maybe knowing something we don't about the "enemy".)
All the comforts of war
On the great scale of American bases, think of Bagram as a city, secondary bases
as small towns, FOBS as heavily gated communities in rural landscapes, and outlying
COPs (Combat Outposts) as camps you wouldn't want your kid to go to. A FOB is,
by definition, pretty far out there on the fringe, but I have to say straight
out that when the chopper dropped me off in full (and remarkably heavy) body
armor and Kevlar helmet at my designated FOB, it didn't look at all like "the
front" to me.
I should explain that my enduring image of war comes from the trenches of
World War I, from which my father returned with a lot of medals, lifelong disabilities,
and horrific picture books I wasn't allowed to see as a child. In that war,
men lived for months on end without a change of uniform, in muddy or frozen
trenches, infested with rats and lice, often amid their own excrement and their
own dead.
The frontline FOB where I landed and its soldiers, by contrast, are spic-and-span.
Credit for this goes largely to the remarkably inexpensive labor of crews of
Filipinos, Indians, Croatians and others lured from distant lands by American
for-profit private contractors responsible for making our troops feel at home
away from home. The base's streets are laid out on a grid. Tents in tidy rows
are banked with standard sand bags and their super-sized cousins, towering Hescos
filled with rocks and rubble.
The tents are cooled by roaring tornados of air conditioning, thanks to equipment
fueled by gasoline that costs the army about $400 per gallon to import. It takes
fuelers three to four hours every day to refill all the giant generators that
keep the cold air coming, so I felt guilty when, to prevent shivering in my
sleep, I stuffed my towel into the ducts suspended from the ceiling of my tent.
More permanent buildings are going up and some, already built by Afghans
and deemed not good enough for American habitation, are scheduled for reconstruction.
Even in distant FOBs like this one, the building boom is prodigious. There's
a big gym with the latest body-building equipment, and a morale-boosting center
equipped with telephones and banks of computers connected to the Internet that
are almost always in use. A 24/7 chow hall serves barbecued ribs, steak and
lobster tails, though everything is cooked beyond recognition by those underpaid
laborers to whom this cuisine is utterly foreign.
maintaining a single American soldier in Afghanistan, currently estimated
at US$1 million.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not making a case for filthy trenches. But why should
war be gussied up like home? If war were undisguisedly as nasty and brutish
as it truly is, it might also tend to be short. Soldiers freed from illusions
might mutiny, as many did in Vietnam, or desert and go home. But this modern,
cushier kind of pseudo-war is different.
Many young soldiers told me that they actually live better in the army, even
when deployed, than they did in civilian life, where they couldn't make ends
meet, especially when they were trying to pay for college or raise a family
by working one or two low-wage jobs. They won't mutiny. They're doing better
than many of their friends back home. (And they're dutiful, which makes for
acts of personal heroism, even in a foolhardy cause.) They are likely to re-enlist,
though many told me they'd prefer to quit the army and go to work for much higher
pay with the for-profit private contractors that now "service" American war.
But the odd thing is that no one seems to question the relative cushiness
of this life at war (nor the inequity of the hardscrabble civilian life left
behind) - least of all those best able to observe firsthand the contrast between
our garrisons and the humble equipment and living conditions of Afghans, both
friend and foe. Rather, the contrast seems to inspire many soldiers with renewed
appreciation of "our American way of life" and a determination to "do good things"
for the Afghan people, just as many feel they did for the people of Iraq.
I emphasize all this because nothing I'd read about soldiering prepared me
for the extent of these comforts - or the tedium that attends them. Plenty of
soldiers don't leave the base. They hold down desk jobs, issue supplies, manage
logistics, repair vehicles or radios, refuel generators and trucks, plan "development"
projects, handle public affairs, or update tactical maps inscribed (at certain
locations I am obliged not to name) with admonitions like "Here Be Dragons"
or "Here Do Bad Stuff". They face the boredom of ordinary, unheroic, repetitive
tasks.
The most common injury they are likely to suffer is a sprained ankle, thanks
to eastern Afghanistan's carpet of loose rocks - just the size to trip you up.
On the wall in the FOB's clinic is a poster with schematic drawings and instructions
for strengthening ankles, an anatomical part not enhanced by any of the fitness
machines at the gym. The medics dispense a lot of ibuprofen and keep a supply
of crutches handy.
What's going on
As this is an infantry base, however, most squads regularly venture outside
the wire and the characteristic, probably long-term disability the soldiers
take with them is bad knees - from the great weight of the things they wear
and carry.
The base commander reminded me of one of the principles of COIN: security
should be established by non-lethal means. So most infantry missions are "presence
patrols", described by one officer as "walking around in places where we won't
get shot at just to show the Afs [Afghans] that we're keeping them safe."
I went outside the wire myself on one of these presence patrols, a mission
to a village, and - I'm sorry to say - it was no friendly stroll. It's a soldier's
job to be "focused"; that is, to watch out for enemies. So you can't be "distracted"
by greeting people along the way or stopping to chat. Entering a village hall
to meet elders, for instance, may sound cordial - winning hearts and minds.
But sweeping in with guns at the ready shatters that friendly feeling. Speaking
as someone who has visited Afghans in their homes for years, I have to say that
this approach does not make a good impression. It probably wouldn't go over
well in your hometown either.
Nor does it seem to work. Since the US military adopted COIN to "protect
the populace", civilian casualties have gone up 23%; 6,000 Afghan civilians
were killed last year (and that's undoubtedly an undercount). No wonder the
presence of American troops leaves so many Afghans feeling not safer, but more
endangered, and it even inspires some to take up arms against the occupying
army. Ever more often, at least in the area where I was embedded, a non-lethal
presence patrol turns into a lethal firefight.
One day, near the end of my embed, I watched a public affairs officer frame
a photograph of a soldier who had been killed in a firefight and mount it on
the wall by the commander's office beside the black-framed photos of seven other
soldiers. This American fighting force had been in place at the FOB for only
a few weeks, having relieved another contingent, yet it had already lost eight
men. (Five Afghan soldiers had been killed as well, but their pictures were
notably absent from the gallery of remembrance.) The army takes a photograph
of every soldier at the beginning of his or her service, so it's on file when
needed; when, that is, a soldier is killed.
Most American bases and combat outposts are named for dead American soldiers.
When a soldier is killed - or "falls", as the army likes to put it - the Internet
service and the phones on base go dead until an army delegation has knocked
on the door of surviving family members. So even if you're one of those soldiers
who never leaves the base, you're always reminded of what's going on out there.
And then usually toward evening, some unseen enemies on the peaks around the
base begin to shoot down at it, and American gunners respond with shells that
lift great clouds of rock and dust from the mountains into the darkening sky.
Doing good to Afghans
On the base, I heard incessant talk about COIN, the "new" doctrine resurrected
from the disaster of Vietnam in the irrational hope that it will work this time.
From my experience at the FOB, however, it's clear enough that the hearts-and-minds
part of COIN is already dead in the water, and one widespread practice in the
military that's gone unreported by other embedded journalists helps explain
why.
So here's a TomDispatch exclusive, courtesy of Afghan-American men serving
as interpreters for the soldiers. They were embarrassed to the point of agony
when mentioning this habit, but desperate to put a stop to it. COIN calls for
the military to meet and make friends with village elders, drink tea, plan "development",
and captivate their hearts and minds. Several interpreters told me, however,
that every meeting includes some young American soldiers whose locker-room-style
male bonding features bouts of hilarious farting.
To Afghan men, nothing is more shameful. A fart is proof that a man cannot
control any of his apparatus below the belt. The man who farts is thus not a
man at all. He cannot be taken seriously, nor can any of his ideas or promises
or plans.
Blissfully unaware of such things, the army goes on planning together with
its civilian consultants (representatives of the US State Department, the US
Department of Agriculture and various independent contractors who make up what's
called a Human Terrain Team charged with interpreting local culture and helping
to win the locals over to our side). Some speak of "building infrastructure",
others of advancing "good governance" or planning "economic development". All
talk of "doing good" and "helping" Afghanistan.
In a typical mess-up on the actual terrain of Afghanistan,
army experts previously in charge of this base had already had a million-dollar
suspension bridge built over a river some distance away, but hadn't thought
to secure land rights, so no road leads to it. Now the local American agriculture
specialist wants to introduce alfalfa to these waterless, rocky mountains to
feed herds of cattle principally pastured in his mind.
Yet even as I was filling my notebook with details of their delusionary schemes,
the base commander told me he had already been forced to "put aside development".
He had his hands full facing a Taliban onslaught he hadn't expected. Throughout
Afghanistan, insurgent attacks have gone up 51% since the official adoption
of COIN as the strategy du jour. On this eastern front, where the commander
had served six years earlier, he now faces a "surge" of intimidation, assassination,
suicide attacks, roadside bombs and fighters with greater technical capability
than he has ever seen in Afghanistan.
A few days after we spoke, the Afghanistan command was handed to General
David Petraeus, the sainted refurbisher of the military's counter-insurgency
manual. I wonder if the base commander has told Petraeus yet what he told me
then: "What we're fighting here now - it's a conventional war."
I'd been "on the front" of this war for less than two weeks, and I already
needed a vacation. Being outside the wire had filled me with sorrow as I watched
earnest, heavily armed and armored boys try to win over white-bearded Afghans
- men of extraordinary dignity - who have seen all this before and know the
outcome.
Being on the base was tedious, often tense, and equally sorrowful at times
when soldiers fell. Then the base commander, on foot, escorted the armored vehicles
returning from a firefight onto the base the way a bygone cavalry officer might
enter a frontier fort, leading a riderless horse. The scene would look good
in a Hollywood war movie: moving in that sentimental Technicolor way that seems
to imbue with heroic significance unnecessary and pointless death.
One night I bedded down outdoors under a profusion of stars and an Islamic
crescent moon. Invisible in the dark, I couldn't help overhearing a soldier
who'd slipped out to make a cell phone call back home. "I really need to talk
to you today," he said, and then stumbling in his search for words, he broke
down. "No," he said at last, "I'm fine. I'll call you back later."
The next day, carrying my helmet and my armor on my arm, I boarded a helicopter
and flew away.
Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations
at Boston University. His new book,
Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, has just been published.
Listen to the latest TomCast audio interview to hear him discuss the book by
clicking
here or, to download to an iPod,
here.
If you ever needed convincing that the world of American “national security”
is well along the road to profligate lunacy, read the striking three-part
“Top Secret America” series by Dana Priest and William Arkin that the
Washington Post published last week. When it comes to the expansion of the
U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), which claims 17 major agencies and organizations,
the figures are staggering. Here’s
just a taste: “Twenty-four [new intelligence] organizations were created
by the end of 2001, including the Office of Homeland Security and the Foreign
Terrorist Asset Tracking Task Force. In 2002, 37 more were created to track
weapons of mass destruction, collect threat tips, and coordinate the new focus
on counterterrorism. That was followed the next year by 36 new organizations;
and 26 after that; and 31 more; and 32 more; and 20 or more each in 2007, 2008,
and 2009. In all, at least 263 organizations have been created or reorganized
as a response to 9/11.”
More striking yet, the articles make clear (admittedly
a few years late) that no one has a complete picture of the extent of the
American intelligence quagmire -- from its finances (announced at $75 billion
but, the authors assure us, significantly higher) to its geography, its output
(the 50,000 top-secret reports it churns out yearly that no one has time to
read or track), its composition, or even its office space. (“In Washington and
the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work
are under construction or have been built since September 2001.”) And keep in
mind that all of this and more was created not to keep track of or fight a series
of covert wars with another major imperial power like
the Soviet Union, but to track and hunt down a rag-tag terrorist outfit
with a
couple of thousand members, including modest-sized groups in countries like
Yemen and small numbers of individual wannabe terrorists like the “underwear
bomber.” In much of this, as anyone who bothers to scan front-page headlines
knows, the IC has been remarkably unsuccessful. Such staggeringly out-of-control
expansion should, of course, be a major scandal, but along with our constant
wars, it’s already so much a part of the new national security norm that the
publication of the Post series is unlikely to have any significant effect.
All this has, in turn, been driven by
Fear Inc. To fuel its profitable if cancerous growth, it has vastly exaggerated
the relatively minor and
largely manageable danger of Islamic terrorism -- since 9/11, above shark
attacks but way below drunken-driving accidents -- among the many
far more serious dangers this country faces. If the IC actually worked as
an effective intelligence delivery system, we would be a Mensa among states.
But how could such a proliferation of overlapping agencies and outfits, aided
and abetted by a burgeoning
privatized, mercenary version of the same, provide “intelligence”? With
more than two-thirds of all intelligence programs militarized and overseen by
the Pentagon, itself driven to
paroxysms of spending and expansion since 2001 (despite the fact that all
major military challengers to the U.S. are long gone), labeling this morass
“intelligence” should be considered a joke. However absurd, though, don’t expect
any of those organizations or agencies to disappear any time soon. They’re ours
for the duration.
It’s into such national security institutional madness that Andrew Bacevich,
author of the bestselling The Limits of Power, strides in his latest
work, to be published this week,
Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War. It is the single
best source for understanding how Washington came to garrison the planet, intervene
regularly in distant lands, and turn war-making -- and not even successful war-making
at that -- into an American norm. It’s simply a must-read. Think of today’s
TomDispatch post as a little introduction to just a few of that book’s themes.
(And while you’re at it, catch Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview
in which Bacevich discusses his new book by clicking
here, or to download it to your iPod,
here.) Tom
The End of (Military) History? The United States, Israel, and the Failure of the Western Way of
War
By
Andrew J. Bacevich
“In watching the flow of events over the past decade or so, it is hard
to avoid the feeling that something very fundamental has happened in world
history.” This sentiment, introducing the essay that made Francis Fukuyama
a household name, commands renewed attention today, albeit from a different
perspective.
Developments during the 1980s, above all the winding down of the Cold
War, had convinced Fukuyama that the “end of history” was at hand. “The
triumph of the West, of the Western idea,” he wrote in 1989, “is
evident… in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western
liberalism.”
Today the West no longer looks quite so triumphant. Yet events during
the first decade of the present century have delivered history to another
endpoint of sorts. Although Western liberalism may retain considerable appeal,
the Western way of war has run its course.
For Fukuyama, history implied ideological competition, a contest pitting
democratic capitalism against fascism and communism. When he wrote his famous
essay, that contest was reaching an apparently definitive conclusion.
Yet from start to finish, military might had determined that competition’s
course as much as ideology. Throughout much of the twentieth century, great
powers had vied with one another to create new, or more effective, instruments
of coercion. Military innovation assumed many forms. Most obviously, there
were the weapons: dreadnoughts and aircraft carriers, rockets and missiles,
poison gas, and atomic bombs -- the list is a long one. In their effort
to gain an edge, however, nations devoted equal attention to other factors:
doctrine and organization, training systems and mobilization schemes, intelligence
collection and war plans.
All of this furious activity, whether undertaken by France or Great Britain,
Russia or Germany, Japan or the United States, derived from a common belief
in the plausibility of victory. Expressed in simplest terms, the Western
military tradition could be reduced to this proposition: war remains a viable
instrument of statecraft, the accoutrements of modernity serving, if anything,
to enhance its utility.
Grand Illusions
That was theory. Reality, above all the two world wars of the last century,
told a decidedly different story. Armed conflict in the industrial age reached
new heights of lethality and destructiveness. Once begun, wars devoured
everything, inflicting staggering material, psychological, and moral damage.
Pain vastly exceeded gain. In that regard, the war of 1914-1918 became emblematic:
even the winners ended up losers. When fighting eventually stopped, the
victors were left not to celebrate but to mourn. As a consequence, well
before Fukuyama penned his essay, faith in war’s problem-solving capacity
had begun to erode. As early as 1945, among several great powers -- thanks
to war, now great in name only -- that faith disappeared altogether.
Among nations classified as liberal democracies, only two resisted this
trend. One was the United States, the sole major belligerent to emerge from
the Second World War stronger, richer, and more confident. The second was
Israel, created as a direct consequence of the horrors unleashed by that
cataclysm. By the 1950s, both countries subscribed to this common conviction:
national security (and, arguably, national survival) demanded unambiguous
military superiority. In the lexicon of American and Israeli politics, “peace”
was a codeword. The essential prerequisite for peace was for any and all
adversaries, real or potential, to accept a condition of permanent inferiority.
In this regard, the two nations -- not yet intimate allies -- stood apart
from the rest of the Western world.
So even as they professed their devotion to peace, civilian and military
elites in the United States and Israel prepared obsessively for war. They
saw no contradiction between rhetoric and reality.
Yet belief in the efficacy of military power almost inevitably breeds
the temptation to put that power to work. “Peace through strength” easily
enough becomes “peace through war.” Israel succumbed to this temptation
in 1967. For Israelis, the Six Day War proved a turning point. Plucky David
defeated, and then became, Goliath. Even as the United States was flailing
about in Vietnam, Israel had evidently succeeded in definitively mastering
war.
A quarter-century later, U.S. forces seemingly caught up. In 1991, Operation
Desert Storm, George H.W. Bush’s war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein,
showed that American troops like Israeli soldiers knew how to win quickly,
cheaply, and humanely. Generals like H. Norman Schwarzkopf persuaded themselves
that their brief desert campaign against Iraq had replicated -- even eclipsed
-- the battlefield exploits of such famous Israeli warriors as Moshe Dayan
and Yitzhak Rabin. Vietnam faded into irrelevance.
For both Israel and the United States, however, appearances proved deceptive.
Apart from fostering grand illusions, the splendid wars of 1967 and 1991
decided little. In both cases, victory turned out to be more apparent than
real. Worse, triumphalism fostered massive future miscalculation.
On the Golan Heights, in Gaza, and throughout the West Bank, proponents
of a Greater Israel -- disregarding Washington’s objections -- set out to
assert permanent control over territory that Israel had seized. Yet “facts
on the ground” created by successive waves of Jewish settlers did little
to enhance Israeli security. They succeeded chiefly in shackling Israel
to a rapidly growing and resentful Palestinian population that it could
neither pacify nor assimilate.
In the Persian Gulf, the benefits reaped by the United States after 1991
likewise turned out to be ephemeral. Saddam Hussein survived and became
in the eyes of successive American administrations an imminent threat to
regional stability. This perception prompted (or provided a pretext for)
a radical reorientation of strategy in Washington. No longer content to
prevent an unfriendly outside power from controlling the oil-rich Persian
Gulf, Washington now sought to dominate the entire Greater Middle East.
Hegemony became the aim. Yet the United States proved no more successful
than Israel in imposing its writ.
During the 1990s, the Pentagon embarked willy-nilly upon what became
its own variant of a settlement policy. Yet U.S. bases dotting the Islamic
world and U.S. forces operating in the region proved hardly more welcome
than the Israeli settlements dotting the occupied territories and the soldiers
of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) assigned to protect them. In both cases,
presence provoked (or provided a pretext for) resistance. Just as Palestinians
vented their anger at the Zionists in their midst, radical Islamists targeted
Americans whom they regarded as neo-colonial infidels.
Stuck
No one doubted that Israelis (regionally) and Americans (globally) enjoyed
unquestioned military dominance. Throughout Israel’s near abroad, its tanks,
fighter-bombers, and warships operated at will. So, too, did American tanks,
fighter-bombers, and warships wherever they were sent.
So what? Events made it increasingly evident that military dominance
did not translate into concrete political advantage. Rather than enhancing
the prospects for peace, coercion produced ever more complications. No matter
how badly battered and beaten, the “terrorists” (a catch-all term applied
to anyone resisting Israeli or American authority) weren’t intimidated,
remained unrepentant, and kept coming back for more.
Israel ran smack into this problem during Operation Peace for Galilee,
its 1982 intervention in Lebanon. U.S. forces encountered it a decade later
during Operation Restore Hope, the West’s gloriously titled foray into Somalia.
Lebanon possessed a puny army; Somalia had none at all. Rather than producing
peace or restoring hope, however, both operations ended in frustration,
embarrassment, and failure.
And those operations proved but harbingers of worse to come. By the 1980s,
the IDF’s glory days were past. Rather than lightning strikes deep into
the enemy rear, the narrative of Israeli military history became a cheerless
recital of dirty wars -- unconventional conflicts against irregular forces
yielding problematic results. The First Intifada (1987-1993), the Second
Intifada (2000-2005), a second Lebanon War (2006), and Operation Cast Lead,
the notorious 2008-2009 incursion into Gaza, all conformed to this pattern.
Meanwhile, the differential between Palestinian and Jewish Israeli birth
rates emerged as a looming threat -- a “demographic bomb,” Benjamin Netanyahu
called it. Here were new facts on the ground that military forces, unless
employed pursuant to a policy of ethnic cleansing, could do little to redress.
Even as the IDF tried repeatedly and futilely to bludgeon Hamas and Hezbollah
into submission, demographic trends continued to suggest that within a generation
a majority of the population within Israel and the occupied territories
would be Arab.
Trailing a decade or so behind Israel, the United States military nonetheless
succeeded in duplicating the IDF’s experience. Moments of glory remained,
but they would prove fleeting indeed. After 9/11, Washington’s efforts to
transform (or “liberate”) the Greater Middle East kicked into high gear.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror began impressively
enough, as U.S. forces operated with a speed and élan that had once been
an Israeli trademark. Thanks to “shock and awe,” Kabul fell, followed less
than a year and a half later by Baghdad. As one senior Army general explained
to Congress in 2004, the Pentagon had war all figured out:
“We are now able to create decision superiority that is enabled by networked
systems, new sensors and command and control capabilities that are producing
unprecedented near real time situational awareness, increased information
availability, and an ability to deliver precision munitions throughout the
breadth and depth of the battlespace… Combined, these capabilities of the
future networked force will leverage information dominance, speed and precision,
and result in decision superiority.”
The key phrase in this mass of techno-blather was the one that occurred
twice: “decision superiority.” At that moment, the officer corps, like the
Bush administration, was still convinced that it knew how to win.
Such claims of success, however, proved obscenely premature. Campaigns
advertised as being wrapped up in weeks dragged on for years, while American
troops struggled with their own intifadas. When it came to achieving
decisions that actually stuck, the Pentagon (like the IDF) remained clueless.
Winless
If any overarching conclusion emerges from the Afghan and Iraq Wars (and
from their Israeli equivalents), it’s this: victory is a chimera. Counting
on today’s enemy to yield in the face of superior force makes about as much
sense as buying lottery tickets to pay the mortgage: you better be really
lucky.
Meanwhile, as the U.S. economy went into a tailspin, Americans contemplated
their equivalent of Israel’s “demographic bomb” -- a “fiscal bomb.” Ingrained
habits of profligacy, both individual and collective, held out the prospect
of long-term stagnation: no growth, no jobs, no fun. Out-of-control spending
on endless wars exacerbated that threat.
By 2007, the American officer corps itself gave up on victory, although
without giving up on war. First in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, priorities
shifted. High-ranking generals shelved their expectations of winning --
at least as a Rabin or Schwarzkopf would have understood that term. They
sought instead to not lose. In Washington as in U.S. military command posts,
the avoidance of outright defeat emerged as the new gold standard of success.
As a consequence, U.S. troops today sally forth from their base camps
not to defeat the enemy, but to “protect the people,” consistent with the
latest doctrinal fashion. Meanwhile, tea-sipping U.S. commanders cut deals
with warlords and tribal chieftains in hopes of persuading guerrillas to
lay down their arms.
A new conventional wisdom has taken hold, endorsed by everyone from new
Afghan War commander General David Petraeus, the most celebrated soldier
of this American age, to Barack Obama, commander-in-chief and Nobel Peace
Prize laureate. For the conflicts in which the United States finds itself
enmeshed, “military solutions” do not exist. As Petraeus himself has emphasized,
“we can’t kill our way out of" the fix we’re in. In this way, he also pronounced
a eulogy on the Western conception of warfare of the last two centuries.
The Unasked Question
What then are the implications of arriving at the end of Western military
history?
In his famous essay, Fukuyama cautioned against thinking that the end
of ideological history heralded the arrival of global peace and harmony.
Peoples and nations, he predicted, would still find plenty to squabble about.
With the end of military history, a similar expectation applies. Politically
motivated violence will persist and may in specific instances even retain
marginal utility. Yet the prospect of Big Wars solving Big Problems is probably
gone for good. Certainly, no one in their right mind, Israeli or American,
can believe that a continued resort to force will remedy whatever it is
that fuels anti-Israeli or anti-American antagonism throughout much of the
Islamic world. To expect persistence to produce something different or better
is moonshine.
It remains to be seen whether Israel and the United States can come to
terms with the end of military history. Other nations have long since done
so, accommodating themselves to the changing rhythms of international politics.
That they do so is evidence not of virtue, but of shrewdness. China, for
example, shows little eagerness to disarm. Yet as Beijing expands its reach
and influence, it emphasizes trade, investment, and development assistance.
Meanwhile, the People’s Liberation Army stays home. China has stolen a page
from an old American playbook, having become today the preeminent practitioner
of “dollar diplomacy.”
The collapse of the Western military tradition confronts Israel with
limited choices, none of them attractive. Given the history of Judaism and
the history of Israel itself, a reluctance of Israeli Jews to entrust their
safety and security to the good will of their neighbors or the warm regards
of the international community is understandable. In a mere six decades,
the Zionist project has produced a vibrant, flourishing state. Why put all
that at risk? Although the demographic bomb may be ticking, no one really
knows how much time remains on the clock. If Israelis are inclined to continue
putting their trust in (American-supplied) Israeli arms while hoping for
the best, who can blame them?
In theory, the United States, sharing none of Israel’s demographic or
geographic constraints and, far more richly endowed, should enjoy far greater
freedom of action. Unfortunately, Washington has a vested interest in preserving
the status quo, no matter how much it costs or where it leads. For the military-industrial
complex, there are contracts to win and buckets of money to be made. For
those who dwell in the bowels of the national security state, there are
prerogatives to protect. For elected officials, there are campaign contributors
to satisfy. For appointed officials, civilian and military, there are ambitions
to be pursued.
And always there is a chattering claque of militarists, calling for
jihad and insisting on ever greater exertions, while remaining alert
to any hint of backsliding. In Washington, members of this militarist camp,
by no means coincidentally including many of the voices that most insistently
defend Israeli bellicosity, tacitly collaborate in excluding or marginalizing
views that they deem heretical. As a consequence, what passes for debate
on matters relating to national security is a sham. Thus are we invited
to believe, for example, that General Petraeus’s appointment as the umpteenth
U.S. commander in Afghanistan constitutes a milestone on the way to ultimate
success.
Nearly 20 years ago, a querulous Madeleine Albright demanded to know:
“What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about
if we can't use it?” Today, an altogether different question deserves our
attention: What’s the point of constantly using our superb military if doing
so doesn’t actually work?
Washington’s refusal to pose that question provides a measure of the
corruption and dishonesty permeating our politics.
It occurred
to me that this story might not get all that much mainstream air time in the
US, for reasons that will become obvious.
We’ve been having an inquiry
into the background to the Iraq war over here. There was another enquiry back
in the Blair era, Hutton,
summarised by wikipedia:
On 18 July 2003, Kelly, an employee of the
Ministry of Defence, was found dead after he had been named as the source
of quotes used by
BBC journalist
Andrew Gilligan. These quotes had formed the basis of media reports
claiming that
Tony
Blair’s
Labour government had knowingly “sexed
up” the “September
Dossier“, a report into
Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. The inquiry opened in August 2003
and reported on 28 January 2004. The inquiry report cleared the government
of wrongdoing, while the BBC was strongly criticised, leading to the resignation
of the BBC’s chairman and director-general.
The reported intelligence in the run-up to the war, and the result of this
enquiry, both stank to high heaven at the time, to many.
We’re a safe distance from those events now, Blair has his £5m per annum
sinecure with JP Morgan, the political imperatives have changed, and you can’t
kick the British establishment around, the way Blair and cronies did, without
there being some scores to settle. So the official verdict, on the pre-war intelligence
at least, is now somewhat different. From the FT:
So now we know. Iraq posed no real threat prior to the Anglo-American
invasion of March 2003. There was no credible intelligence to suggest any
link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But what the assault on
Iraq did do was proliferate jihadism across the Middle East and incubate
Islamist extremism in the UK, leading to the London Tube and bus bombings
five years ago and 15 other “substantial plots”.
Now we know? Hmm. Noted commie radical pinko Eliza
Manningham-Buller, (I jest), weighs in with what has pretty much been the anti-war
protesters’ view all along. FT again:
“Arguably we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad,” Eliza Manningham-Buller,
former director-general of MI5, the British domestic security service, told
the UK war inquiry this week.
And the Hutton conclusion may or not have been right about Gilligan’s specific
allegations, but it is now a matter of public record that there were
attempts to manipulate the intelligence to show a greater threat from Iraq than
actually existed. FT again (my emphasis):
…what makes Lady Manningham-Buller’s testimony so devastating is that
this was the advice her service gave Tony Blair’s government at
the time. Indeed, MI5 refused a request “to put in some low-grade”
intelligence to beef up the September 2002 government document making the
case for war “because we didn’t think it was reliable”.
Mr Ross…says containment of Saddam was working but neither the UK nor
the US seemed interested in taking obvious steps to reinforce it. Instead,
they gradually exaggerated the threat he posed, suppressing contrary opinion.
“This process of exaggeration was gradual, and proceeded by accretion
and editing from document to document, in a way that allowed those participating
to convince themselves that they were not engaged in blatant dishonesty.
But this process led to highly misleading statements about the UK assessment
of the Iraqi threat that were, in their totality, lies,” Mr Ross said.
“Lies”. Well, I did say, former diplomat. In fact he resigned from
the Foreign Office in protest at the way the run-up to the war was conducted.
He is slightly more indirect about the Hutton enquiry, but you don’t have to
read very diligently between the lines to see that as the same sort of manipulation.
So…pending a similarly frank and revelatory enquiry in the States, I would
recommend judicious scepticism about reports, let’s say, of alarming Iranian
nuclear plans. If I understand the import of this enquiry testimony aright,
I can’t imagine that supporting British intelligence will feature much in any
such reports – the US will have to make its own evidence up next time. A chap
can act as a poodle up to a point, but there’s a limit.
Of course you can transfer that scepticism across to anything else the adminstration
of the day really, really wants to do. But I think many of you do that already.
Doug Terpstra:
“We’re a safe distance from those events now, Blair has his £5m per annum
sinecure with JP Morgan, the political imperatives have changed … the US
will have to make its own evidence up next time. A chap can act as a poodle
up to a point, but there’s a limit.”
At $10 million (?!), Blair is certainly a well-pampered poodle, as Willie
Clinton before him, and soon Obama. It makes one wonder about Greenspan’s
undisclosed sin-cure at John Paulson & Company. In the end, I really doubt
that imperatives have changed—only the price.
Never “misunderestimate” the stupidity of the Anglo-American public.
War on Iran is now even more imminent after Wikileaks revelations that Iran
and Pakistan are fueling the Afghani resistance. All we need is the pretext,
and the incessantly-repeated past is prologue.
Parvaneh Ferhad:
I had the same thoughts about these ‘revelations’ about Iran, Pakistan
and North Korea.
In fact it could be another attempt to manipulate public opinion, this time
by using a whistleblower-site, seemingly beyond reproach of manipulating
information, to plant the manipulated information.
i on the ball patriot :
“Of course you can transfer that scepticism across to anything else
the adminstration of the day really, really wants to do. But I think many
of you do that already.”
You can transfer that skepticism across to the past forty years and look
at how the gangster financial war on domestic populations was sexed up with
‘free market’, ‘free trade’, ‘private property’, Ayn Rand, make believe
fantasy.
The same bullshit lying GLOBAL media that sexed up and sold the gangster
Iraq and Iran INVASIONS is also the same bullshit lying media that sexed
up and sold the VERY INTENTIONAL debt trap bubble bombs and counterfeit
derivative bunker buster weapons and the dismantling of the regulations
that allowed their use in rolling global financial bombing attacks.
The comparisons should be fleshed out and documented side by side on
the internet in a public court of opinion (the only real court left to the
people) fashion. It should include a fantasy gallows.
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
Dwight Baker:
Looks like a giant bubble of hope just hit the deck on the ship we
Call Freedom.
By Dwight Baker
July 27, 2010 Dbaker007@stx.rr.com
Interesting is the concept of Wikileaks, it seems that reading for the
benefit of others has been the wrong thing to do. Also often thought today
is the idea that say’s say it in 50 words or less and get on with it brother.
So, for anyone that has a common thread with most living today —- reading
over 91 thousands pages of documents is a far cry from being tuned in. For
civil societies have changed over and over again and at this time speed
to process large amounts of information wisely seems to be the best way.
However speed reading and comprehension are not the same thing and often
times those who retain the greatest amounts of truth filled information
have been trained to do so by their masters in education instructions.
Now back to Wikileaks and what is their success really about?
Maybe their success is all about giving their perceived truth in such
large multiple doses with proof documents that now no one can deny that
their perceived truth does not exist.
Another way to think about it and say it might be, the lawyers who show
up in court pulling one little wagon filled with printed pages after another
proves or just gives out the persona they have studied long and hard those
pieces of evidence to prove out their case.
Therefore if that is the case and I am thinking yes it is, the Few in
the Many that must lead out the people held in tyrannical bondage today.
Have found solace in that proof filled documents do abound for all to read
that do exist to help them tell the people following STOP THE WAR. WAR IS
NOT JUST; WAR IS FOR MAKING MONEY, BRING OUR TROOPS HOME. PROSECUTE THOSE
WHO LIE ABOUT THE NEED TO MAKE WAR.
anonymous:
Everybody was fooled? Not likely. I’d say very few were fooled. Far many
more fooled themselves. I recall one military analyst appearing on Aaron
Brown just moments before hostilities actually broke out who objected to
the carnival joy of the commentators and and ordinary Americans keen to
see the blood of the brown man flow. Cut to commercial break and presto!
One less troublesome fly to hear from.
In Britain, the opposite was true. The story has not yet been fully told
and I’d be extremely surprised if it’s simple and morally uncomplicated
when more of the facts come out. What interests
me far more, is our ability to re-configure Bush’s needless war of choice
into a ‘humanitarian mission’. Worse is yet to come. Count
on it.
NOTaREALmerican:
Re: Declaration of Independence states
No “piece of paper” can keep the sociopaths from winning. The rules have
been changed for 200 years now. Rules are always changed. That’s the only
purpose of rules actually; they are a legal form of natural selection. Those
that break the rules successfully have an advantage over the dumbasses that
follow the rules.
A society the doesn’t enforce its traffic laws has no chance at enforce
something as complex as a “Constitution”.
Paraphrasing Harry Caray: The Sociopaths WIN, The Sociopaths WIN!
The third in a series that started with "Blowback" is the strongest statement
of the lot. The experience, expertise, and brain power demand a careful
reading rather than simplistic name calling by those who don't like the
conclusions (for them labeling "Liberal" saves bothering to think or develop
a logical counter argument). Furthermore, there are numerous Conservatives
who would find much of the argument justified.
Every citizen should read the last chapter before investing, making long
term plans, or evaluating this `MBA war President'.
Whether one totally `buys into' the argument (well made) that the Republic
is about gone because of an irresponsible Congress bypassed by the Military
Industrial Complex (a Republican's term you remember) and rotten pervasive
dominance of those interests, it should be carefully evaluated not dismissed
by name calling as some reviewers have done.
No President as asserted so many excess powers via extreme secrecy, curtailing
civil rights, creative legal fatwas, signing statements, making himself
"the decider" snubbing Congress. And has any other claimed to talk to God?
American arrogance compounded by megalomania - my conclusion not Johnson's.
Johnson is not a Pacifist, but he makes a strong case that realistic
American interests could be supported with perhaps 40 bases rather than
740 that pollute relations in countries where they are placed. (His detailed
experience with Japan and Okinawa is more than I'd care to know but one
example.)
Long ago one President suggested that the US could lead by example or
by asserting power and that the later approach would undermine the former
as our own Republic and democracy was destroyed.
L. Lieb:
At times this book was overly critical, and Chalmers Johnson seemed to be
reading too deeply into the situation. There were also times when it brought
up a few tired old arguments.
Johnson points out the fact that every imperial
empire is nearly oblivious to what it is doing: it convinces itself that
what it is doing is different from other past empires, and what they are
doing is for the better. Johnson draws interesting parallels
between this behavior and the current U.S. policies. I would agree with
Johnson here.
Johnson is convinced that the U.S. maintains is imperialism through military
strength, and having military bases around the world. Overall, I agree with
this argument, but I think he overstates the role of the defense lobby in
why we have so many bases overseas close to twenty years after the collapse
of the Soviet Union. The power of the defense lobby might explain why its
so difficult to close a base domestically, but it lacks in why the U.S.
has bases overseas.
Jim Wilder "WilderCO" :
Nemesis (2006) is the final book in Johnson's trilogy, following Blowback
in 2000, and The Sorrows of Empire in 2004. It is a warning call to Americans
in our interdependent world that our foreign policy actions have consequences,
and that we cannot continue to guide our destiny through aggressive use
of military power. Nemesis is well researched with scores of citations.
It poses alarming questions, such as: 1) is our political system capable
of saving the US in the face of the DOD and unaccountable government spending?
and 2) What are the effects of having the US maintain so many bases in foreign
lands? and 3) Is "military Keynesianism" a sustainable
policy?
Johnson draws some historical lessons from the empires of Rome, which tried
to maintain a far flung empire but eventually lost its government, and Britain,
which gave up its distributed empire for the benefit of more robustly sustaining
England. He devotes a chapter examining the CIA as an agency of foreign
policy and the effects of US military bases in foreign countries. He has
many surprising facts, such as there are more people of Lebanese descent
in Brazil than in Lebanon, and that post WWII Japanese pacifism is a fiction.
Johnson considers space the next battleground and describes the currently
deployed ground-based missile defense as a `dual use' system with the potential
offensive purpose of shooting down satellites. Johnson's description of
the future battleground of space is quite thought provoking and alarming,
whatever your attitudes about the efficacy of military preparedness and
the use of force. He points out the collateral damage likely during earth
orbit warfare will have detrimental consequences for everyone, as the debris
clouds will affect all communication satellites. Johnson states that our
government operating in shadows of secrecy is not what the Constitutional
framers intended, and the public should have access to information about
the activities of our government.
This book is depressing in its hard-edged assessments of the future of
the US, and is a signal alarm to that it may already be too late influence
a more secure and sustainable nation for successive generations.
As members of opposing political parties, we disagree on a number of important
issues. But we must not allow honest disagreement over some issues to interfere
with our ability to work together when we do agree.
By far the single most important of these is our current initiative to include
substantial reductions in the projected level of American military spending
as part of future deficit reduction efforts. For decades, the subject of military
expenditures has been glaringly absent from public debate. Yet the Pentagon
budget for 2010 is $693 billion --
more than all other discretionary spending programs combined. Even subtracting
the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, military spending still amounts
to over 42% of total spending.
It is irrefutably clear to us that if we do not make substantial cuts in
the projected levels of Pentagon spending, we will do substantial damage to
our economy and dramatically reduce our quality of life.
We are not talking about cutting the money needed to supply American troops
in the field. Once we send our men and women into battle, even in cases where
we may have opposed going to war, we have an obligation to make sure that our
service members have everything they need. And we are not talking about cutting
essential funds for combating terrorism; we must do everything possible to prevent
any recurrence of the mass murder of Americans that took place on September
11, 2001.
I find it quite astonishing that American politicians are only now beginning
to realize that they need to cut military spending. Their financial epiphany
has arrived 10 years too late.
I would have thought it was patently obvious
that fighting two wars simultaneously with borrowed money isn't very smart.
And what for? America needs to end this arrogant military nonsense and start
putting its own house in order.
I don't know how you conclude that from reading this. Barney Frank has
been anti-pentagon for his entire career... and Ron Paul's libertarian tendencies
leave no room for any compromise - if he had his way, every overseas military
base would be shut down immediately. He's been telling this to anyone who
would listen for 40 years at least.
So there's nothing new in these two guys wanting to reduce pentagon spending.
And the existence of this article doesn't mean
a single thing about the feelings of the rest of the senate and congress.
I'm sure they will be able to get a few names to sign on, but we are still
a long, long way from the kind of domestic economic collapse that would
force the hawks to go along with deep defense cuts.
90% of the GOP would rather see 30% unemployment
than cut military spending. There's two main reasons for this - First, ideologically
the GOP and many Democrats are simply devoted to the idea of American military
supremacy. Cutting military spending significantly would feel like being
castrated to a large part of the voting public.
Second, every single state in the USA has thousands of citizens employed
by the Military or their suppliers. One truism of American politics is that
a politician will *NEVER* vote for a spending cut that affects jobs in his
home state. For military spending that goes double.
Real defense spending cuts are a long way off yet.
jhoughton:
Creating jobs? The military creates a ton of jobs, both through the employment
of service members and the corporations that support them and build tpars
plus face threats from Iran, N Korea, etc).
While you continue to spend money that you don't have on your War efforts
your Country men/women will go without. Your infrastructure will suffer,
your people will continue to remain unemployed, your poor will only only
become poorer, more hopeless, and more disgruntled and then you will face
a different problem from within your borders( as if the Gangs in you in
the meantime China, India, Russia wi:cut every program for
Chaotician101:
With Obama's handpicked panel who have pre decided that only the fully
funded program, Social Security system, is the place to cut; after Congress
with the active collusion of all administrations have systematically looted
the "trust" funds paid into Social Security from PAYROLL taxes for the Social
Security bubble of baby-boomers (remember Georgie waving the IOUs)!
These stolen monies were used to give the top 1% tax breaks and you sure
do not expect their lackeys in Congress to actually tax it back to pay off
those IOUs, or to tax those robber barons of wall street with "capital gains"
from unearned activities who sure don't expect their purchased Congress
to treat them as if they actually worked to "earn" their income!!
Nor should our poor volunteer mercenaries in training have to do such
menial jobs as KP, cooking, making their own beds, or managing supplies
when our viperous contractors are happy to take 10times their pay to do
it for them! Stopping ALL contracting activities for the "volunteer" military
would bring a screeching halt to all our foreign adventurism and if we forbid
selling any American arms or munitions to ANY foreign county it just might
stop completely!!
SilentSolidarity:
We need a coalition in Congress that finally puts an end to extreme military
spending. Under Clinton, we spent "only" $200 billion/year. 10 years later
we end up spending $700 billion plus some additional funding here and there.
$500 billion that could be spent in so many other, DOMESTIC issues. Just
to list a few: Health Care, Education, Research & Development, Infrastructure,
Border Security, Environment, and Cities.
There are a lot of great projects in this country that lack the funding.
To name one: California High-Speed Rail. While other foreign governments
invest tens of billions of dollars in high-speed rail, Congress decides
to invest a ridiculous sum of $1.4 billion in high-speed rail for the Fiscal
year 2011.
TheBurdicks:
I agree with you point by point. I would make one change in your comment.
We are not frittering away our national treasure on DEFENSE. Our military
expenditure is arguably somewhere around 90% wasted on OFFENSE.
In the 21st Century, there can be little or no justification for an offensive
military capacity. The maintenance of a small reactive and defensive military,
consisting mostly of Special Forces - Seals, Rangers, Marine Recon, etc
- is all that is indicated for response to the "asymmetrical" conflicts
we face.
jimpager:
When the Soviets forward deploy, we call that "Expansion of the Soviet
Empire." When the British forward deploy, we say "The Sun Never Sets over
the British Empire." When America forward deploys we call that "Containment."
America leads the World in public relations bullshit. America has what,
700 bases outside the United States? The British Empire, the Russian Empire,
and the Roman Empire all pale in comparison to the American Empire. Barney
Frank is correct. Tell the Pentagon they got 100 bases tops and the rest
are shut down. Bring the troops home and at least spend all that money in
America. We spend more than the rest of the world combined and then we pump
up everyone else's economy with the spending. Bring it home.
hu.man:
The American military has been cast in the mold of the post WWII era
of a raging Cold War. Now that the Cold War is no longer a concern, the
military needs to reassess its posture and reconstruct according to a new
and an updated paradigm.
The problem arises from the vested interests in the military industrial
complex that resist the imminent change. Drastic cuts in military spending,
if implemented rapidly, may have a negative impact on the economy in general
and be of catastrophic consequence for regions of impact.
Our recent experiences in the Middle East have adequately demonstrated
how unprepared the military has been to effectively perform in non-conventional
and asymmetrical conflicts. Rather than focusing on cutting military spending
for the sake of saving the national budget, we would be far better off to
direct attention toward performing a major overhaul in the military and
let the spending chips fall where they may.
Jaczar:
I don't want the military to 'reassess itself". That's the problem. The
"civilian " government is supposed to be in charge of the military, but
it just ain't so. The military manipulates congress through the weapons
lobbyists who spend millions to elect congressmen that will support them.
The only way it will stop is when the middle class is so small it can no
longer support the military - industrial complex.
cyberfringe:
Basically, you are right. But I agree with Jaczar that it is not the
military that needs to do the assessing. Policy is made by our civilian
government -- which receives a lot of campaign contributions from the military
industry. Campaign finance reform - including blocking all corporate contributions
- is the only thing that will cut that dependency and enable tough decisions.
Neither can the military leadership provide independent advice since many
officers who retire go on to lucrative jobs in the defense industry. Nobody
will bite the hand that feeds them. That is the essence of the problem.
Bundenthal :
A few months ago the projected TOTAL SHORTFALL for the 48 state budgets
predicted to be in the red for 2010/2011 was approx. 120 Billion. We have
a real SIMPLE lesson in opportunity costs here.
Afghanistan/Iraq or the US? Which is more important to us?
jomamas:
It's not 42% of 'federal budget' it's of 'discretionary spending'. Most
of the budget is made up of Social Security, Welfare, Mediare/Medicaid -
which are 'entitlements'. I think only Education and Military are the big
discretionary ones, and not even sure about education.
ADVOCATE4ZPG :
Despite what the U.S. military declares, manpower costs could be reduced
with a return to conscription--with no exclusions for class; however, the
"elites" you speak of would instantly change from an aggressive, militarily-labiled,
foreign policy.....to ANYTHING else. Especially, is this true of MANY Republicans
who are long on aggressive fustian but shamefully short on experiencing
what they prescribe....
There was, of course, never ANY threat to the U.S. from Hussein's regime
in Iraq; moreover, even allowing for a vengeful foray into Afghanistan,
U.S. military "planners" made a fatal mistake with a commitment at the present
level.
The West has NEVER won a guerilla war--and certainly not one in a theatre
wherein the populace is unenthusiastic about prosecution and the racial/cultural/ethnic
differences are so apparent.
DingoDave:
"Chalmers Johnson"
Author of 'Blowback', 'The Sorrows Of Empire' and 'Nemesis: The Last
Days Of The American Empire', Chalmers Johnson has literally written the
book on the concept of American Hegemony. A former naval officer and consultant
of the C.I.A., he now serves as professor Emeritus at UC San Diego. As co-founder
and President of the Japan Policy Research Institute, Mr. Johnson also continues
to promote public education about Asia's role in the international community.
In this exclusive interview, you will find out why the practice of empire
building is, by no means, a thing of the past. As the United States continues
to expand its military forces around the globe, the consequences are being
suffered by each and every one of us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPr_T7btVgA
As I've previously
pointed out, America's military-industrial complex is ruining our economy.
And U.S. military and intelligence leaders say that the economic crisis is
the biggest national security threat to the United States. See
this,
this and
this.
As RT points out, it is ironic that America's huge military spending is what
made us an empire ... but our huge military is what is bankrupting us ... No
wonder people from opposite ends of the political spectrum like
Barney Frank
and Ron Paul are calling for a reduction in military spending.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the
most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only
one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what
it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows
what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the
expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
Since
Aristotle,
three archetypal political forms were broadly discussed:
monarchy,
aristocracy,
and democracy.
A particular state could be a hybrid of these forms, and each form had an associated
"pathological" form:
tyranny,
oligarchy,
and mob rule,
respectively. "Liberal
democracy" came into widespread use during the twentieth century, signifying
a hybrid of the democratic and aristocratic forms: democracy tempered by a constitution
which de facto delegated political power to the elites.[1]
By the middle of the twentieth century, it was recognized that two new political
forms had appeared.
Hannah
Arendt – among others – argued that the governments of
Nazi
Germany and the
Soviet
Union, with their ability to control every aspect of society, could not
be understood in terms of the old typology; the name of this new form would
be
totalitarianism.[2]
With the emergence of a bipolar world with two powers dominating their own sphere
of influence, the term "superpower"
came into wide use. Superpowers were something new, because they possessed power
that was qualitatively different from that of other states.
In addition to their possessing vast
nuclear arsenals, their
being involved in an ideological struggle with each other led to each being
in a state of permanent military mobilization, something that
was new for countries in a time of peace (hence the term "Cold
War"). Each superpower possessed extraterritorial power to influence countries
within its
sphere of influence: The Soviet Union mostly through
military occupation, and the United States through its domination of
multilateral institutions that were set up at the end of World War II.[3]
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States became the world's
sole superpower (or
hyperpower).
Wolin capitalizes the word "superpower" to mark the United States' uniqueness
as being an actual form of government and not an ideal type.
Inverted totalitarianism and managed democracy
Given the transformations that Superpower has undergone during the
military mobilization required to fight the
Axis
powers, and during the subsequent campaign of
containing
the Soviet Union during the Cold War, does Superpower continue to resemble
a liberal democracy domestically, or is it itself taking on totalitarian tendencies?
Wolin suggests that the latter possibility is closer to the truth:
While the versions of totalitarianism represented by Nazism and Fascism
consolidated power by suppressing liberal political practices that had sunk
only shallow cultural roots, Superpower represents
a drive towards totality that draws from the setting where liberalism and
democracy have been established for more than two centuries.
It is Nazism turned upside-down, “inverted totalitarianism.” While
it is a system that aspires to totality, it is driven by an ideology of
the
cost-effective rather than of a “master
race” (Herrenvolk), by the material rather than the “ideal.”[4]
There are three main ways in which inverted totalitarianism is the inverted
form of classical totalitarianism.
First, whereas in Nazi Germany the state dominated economic actors,
corporations and their
lobbying
dominate the Superpower, with the government acting as the servant of large
corporations. This isn't considered corruption, but "normal".[5]
Second, while the Nazi regime aimed at the constant political mobilization
of the population, with its
Nuremberg rallies,
Hitler Youth, and so on, inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass
of the population to be in a persistent state of political apathy. The only
type of political activity expected or desired from the
citizenry
is voting. Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an indication
that the bulk of the population has given up hope that the government will
ever help them.[6]
Third, while the Nazis openly mocked democracy, Superpower maintains
the conceit that it is the model of democracy for the whole world:[7]
Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all
of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party
squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic
and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups,
competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is,
of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention
of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than
a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the
commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of
well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking
governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative
government and public administration by a sea of cash.[8]
Wolin calls this form of democracy, which is sanitized of the political,
managed democracy.
Managed democracy is "a political form in which governments are legitimated
by elections that they have learned to control".[9]
Under managed democracy, the electorate is prevented from having a significant
impact on policies adopted by the state through the continuous employment of
public relations techniques.[10]
This brings us to one major respect in which Superpower resembles Nazi Germany
without an inversion: the essential role that propaganda plays in the system.
Whereas the production of propaganda was crudely centralized in Nazi Germany,
in Superpower it is left to highly
concentrated media corporations, thus maintaining the illusion of a "free
press". Dissent is allowed, although the corporate media serves as a filter,
allowing most people, with limited time available to keep themselves apprised
of current events, only to hear points of view which the corporate media deems
to be "serious".[11]
Superpower has two main totalizing dynamics. The first, directed outward,
finds its expression in the
Global War on Terror and in the
Bush
Doctrine that Superpower has the right to launch
preemptive wars. This amounts to Superpower seeing as illegitimate the attempt
by any state to resist its domination.[12]
The second dynamic, directed inward, involves the subjection of the mass of
the population to economic "rationalization",
with continual "downsizing"
and "outsourcing"
of jobs abroad and dismantling of what remains of the
welfare
state created by
FDR's New
Deal and
Lyndon Johnson's
Great
Society.[13]
(Thus,
neoliberalism
is an integral component of inverted totalitarianism.) The state of insecurity
in which this places the public serves the useful function of making people
feel
helpless, thus making it less likely that they will become politically
active,
and thus helping to maintain the first dynamic.[
Amazon review
Managed Democracy, Superpower, and alas, even, "Inverted Totalitarianism",
June 17, 2008 By John P. Jones III(Albuquerque, NM, USA)
This is a seminal work which "tells it like it is" concerning the current
power arrangements in the American political system, as well as the political
leadership's aspirations towards global empire. Prof. Wolin sets the tone of
his work on page 1, with the juxtaposition of the imagery of Adolph Hitler landing
in a small plane at the 1934 rally at Nuremberg, as shown in Leni Reifenstahl's
"Triumph of the Will," and George Bush landing on the aircraft carrier "Abraham
Lincoln" in 2003. Certainly one of the dominant themes of the book is comparing
the operating power structure in the United States with various totalitarian
regimes of the past: Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Prof
Wolin emphasizes the differences between these totalitarian powers, and the
softer concentration of power in the United States, which he dubs "inverted
totalitarianism."
The book is rich with insights - the best way to savor Prof. Wolin's erudition
is in small chunks. He shows the influence of the ancient Greeks, both Plato,
as well as the Athenian political operative, Alcibiades, on the neo-cons "founding
father," Leo Strauss. He examines in detail the efforts of some of America's
own "founding fathers," particularly Madison and Hamilton, on how democracy
should be contained and managed. He quotes at length an amazingly prescient
passage from Tocqueville predicting one possible scenario for the future of
the American democracy, which ends with "...and finally reduces each nation
to nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government
is the shepherd" (p79-80). He also discusses the profound impact of the "National
Security Strategy of the United States" document of 2002 on the traditional
vision of the values and rights expressed in the Constitution. He raises awkward
questions - asking why there were massive public demonstrations in the Ukraine,
in 2004, following an election deeply flawed by fraud, which ultimately lead
to a new election; yet there were no popular demonstrations in the United States,
a country with much stronger democratic traditions following the irregularities
in the 2000 election.
He seasons his learning with nuggets of wry wit: "such a verdict after Florida
would be an expression of black (sic) humor. (p102); "... to endorse a candidate
or a party for reasons that typically pay only lip service to the basic need
of most citizens...It speciousness is the political counterpart to products
that promise beauty, health, relief of pain, and an end to erectile dysfunction."
(p231); and "No collective memory means no collective guilt; surely My Lai is
the name of a rock star." (p275). He also has a knack for using the popular
phrases for a given sentiment, for example: "get government off our backs."
As other observers have also noted, there is the sharpest of contrasts between
FDR's maxim that "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" to the current constant
promotion of holding the citizenry in a constant state of fear, admirably summarized
on the domestic front by: "Downsizing, reorganization, bubbles bursting, unions
busted, quickly outdated skills, and transfer of jobs abroad create not just
fear but an economy of fear..." (p67)
For all the above, Prof. Wolin deserves 5 and ½ stars, but I did think his
presentation was marred by poor organization, redundancy, and lapses into turgid
prose. For example, on p. 190, long after the issue has been thoroughly discussed,
he says "The administration seized on 9/11 to declare a `war on terrorism.'"
Similarly, on p. 202 he says "Historically, the legislative branch was supposed
to be the power closest to the citizenry..." Numerous other examples could be
cited. Also, I tried - real hard- to come to terms with the term "inverted totalitarianism"
but just never could - the intrinsic meaning simply is not there, like as in
"managed democracy." Perhaps something like a "hyper-concentration of power"
conveys the meaning better.
Overall though, the book is an essential read for anyone interested in the
current state of the world.
U.S. President Barack Obama calls the $3.8-trillion US budget he just sent
to Congress a major step in restoring America's economic health.
In fact, it's another potent fix given to a sick patient deeply addicted
to the dangerous drug - debt.
More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion. The
latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself into ruin by buying
tanks.
Washington's deficit (the difference between spending and income from taxes)
will reach a vertiginous $1.6 trillion US this year. The huge sum will be borrowed,
mostly from China and Japan, to which the U.S. already owes $1.5 trillion. Debt
service will cost $250 billion.
To spend $1 trillion, one would have had to start spending $1 million daily
soon after Rome was founded and continue for 2,738 years until today.
Obama's total military budget is nearly $1 trillion. This includes Pentagon
spending of $880 billion. Add secret black programs (about $70 billion); military
aid to foreign nations like Egypt, Israel and Pakistan; 225,000 military "contractors"
(mercenaries and workers); and veterans' costs. Add $75 billion (nearly four
times Canada's total defense budget) for 16 intelligence agencies with 200,000
employees.
The Afghanistan and Iraq wars ($1 trillion so far), will cost $200-250 billion
more this year, including hidden and indirect expenses. Obama's Afghan "surge"
of 30,000 new troops will cost an additional $33 billion - more than Germany's
total defense budget.
No wonder U.S. defense stocks rose after Peace Laureate Obama's "austerity"
budget.
Military and intelligence spending relentlessly increase as unemployment
heads over 10% and the economy bleeds red ink. America has become the Sick Man
of the Western Hemisphere, an economic cripple like the defunct Ottoman Empire.
The Pentagon now accounts for half of total world military spending. Add
America's rich NATO allies and Japan, and the figure reaches 75%.
China and Russia combined spend only a paltry 10% of what the U.S. spends
on defense.
There are 750 U.S. military bases in 50 nations and 255,000 service members
stationed abroad, 116,000 in Europe, nearly 100,000 in Japan and South Korea.
Military spending gobbles up 19% of federal spending and at least 44% of
tax revenues. During the Bush administration, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
- funded by borrowing - cost each American family more than $25,000.
Like Bush, Obama is paying for America's wars through supplemental authorizations
- putting them on the nation's already maxed-out credit card. Future generations
will be stuck with the bill.
This presidential and congressional jiggery-pokery
is the height of public dishonesty.
America's wars ought to be paid for through taxes, not bookkeeping fraud.
If U.S. taxpayers actually had to pay for the Afghan and Iraq wars, these
conflicts would end in short order.
America needs a fair, honest war tax.
The U.S. clearly has reached the point of imperial overreach. Military spending
and debt-servicing are cannibalizing the U.S. economy, the real basis of its
world power. Besides the late U.S.S.R., the U.S. also increasingly resembles
the dying British Empire in 1945, crushed by immense debts incurred to wage
the Second World War, unable to continue financing or defending the imperium,
yet still imbued with imperial pretensions.
It is increasingly clear the president is not
in control of America's runaway military juggernaut. Sixty years
ago, the great President Dwight Eisenhower, whose portrait I keep by my desk,
warned Americans to beware of the military-industrial complex. Six decades later,
partisans of permanent war and world domination have joined Wall Street's money
lenders to put America into thrall.
Increasing numbers of Americans are rightly outraged and fearful of runaway
deficits. Most do not understand their political leaders are also spending their
nation into ruin through unnecessary foreign wars and a vainglorious attempt
to control much of the globe - what neocons call "full spectrum dominance."
If Obama really were serious about restoring America's economic health, he
would demand military spending be slashed, quickly end the Iraq and Afghan wars
and break up the nation's giant Frankenbanks.
Prior to World War I, when America's imperial aspirations were still relatively
modest, the U.S. military was correspondingly unsophisticated in the uses of
deception. With the coming of World Wars I and II, however, this situation changed
drastically, mainly through the assistance of British intelligence which tutored
its American counterparts, largely out of a desire for self-preservation.
In the early years of World War I, Britain was locked in a military stalemate
with Germany from which it could not extricate itself without help from the
United States. There was one problem, however: American citizens were overwhelmingly
opposed to involvement in the war. To alter America public opinion and bring
the U.S. into the war on its side, Britain retargeted its propaganda machine
toward North America. It also urged the U.S. government to create a home-grown
censorship and propaganda apparatus, which it soon did with help from U.S. media
organizations and journalists. First, though, the U.S. government cracked down
on the anti-war press and public dissent using the then newly passed Espionage
and Sedition Acts.
3 This nearly did away with free speech.
Once it was certain Americans could get little accurate news about the senseless
bloodbath taking place across the Atlantic, President Wilson, largely through
the influence of journalist and public-relations expert Walter Lippmann, soon
set about creating a vast American propaganda machine similar to Britain's.
Wilson, in what could be viewed as a political masterstroke, hired the noted
progressive journalist George Creel to build and manage the new U.S. propaganda
bureaucracy. This gave the organization instant credibility with the public
and helped Creel recruit more top journalists into the program.
The new institution was given the innocent-sounding name, “the U.S. Committee
on Public Information (CPI).” Creel staffed his new propaganda team with experts
from all aspects of the U.S. media industry. Virtually all available modes of
communication were soon put to work selling the war to the American public including
newspapers, posters, cartoons, films, radio broadcasts, academic pamphlets,
and even public speeches.
4
Looking back at the CPI's efforts from the perspective of some decades, communications
scholar and author Stewart Ewen concluded, “In spite of Creel's consistent denials,
the 'House of Truth' was perched not on a foundation of facts, but upon a swamp
of emotions.”
5
After Pearl Harbor
With the coming of World War II, America's uses of deception became considerably
more extensive and sophisticated, thanks again to help from British intelligence.
World War II was total war and the already fuzzy dividing line between journalism
and deception virtually disappeared. American journalists were now fighting
on the same team as the generals.
Censorship and propaganda were by this time such large operations that they
could no longer be managed by a single organization, such as the CPI. Media
censorship was handled by the U.S. Office of Censorship, headed by Byron Price,
formerly executive news editor of the Associated Press, later given the title
Director of Censorship. Propaganda was by now a much more scientific business
than it had been during World War I. Foreign propaganda was initially created
and distributed by a new super-intelligence agency called the Office of Coordinator
of Information (COI), under the direction of Col. William “Wild Bill” Donovan.
COI drew its staff from newspapers, radio-broadcasting organizations, and Hollywood
studios who then happily set to work fighting “the good war” with carefully
crafted (and often overtly racist) words and images.
6
Domestic propaganda, designed to keep the American public solidly behind
the war effort, was managed by an organization called the Office of Facts and
Figures (OFF), later renamed the Office of War Information (OWI). The overall
job of promoting the war at home was given to Elmer Davis, an author, CBS radio
announcer, news analyst, and former New York Times reporter. OFF / OWI
was managed by poet Archibald Macleash, formerly head of the U.S. Library of
Congress.
7, 8
Donovan's COI later became the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) which,
after the War, became the Central Intelligence Agency.
The job of censoring the news and creating war propaganda required the services
of many thousands of journalists, editors, and media executives on both sides
of the Atlantic. This massive effort has been the subject of many books and
scholarly articles, and could not possibly be adequately described here. Suffice
it to say, however, that the American public never received an accurate account
of World War II at the time it was being fought, and there is considerable evidence
that they haven't been given the full story, even today.
9
What American journalists produced was essentially a carefully edited and
largely fictional account of the war. Charles Lynch of Reuters news service
later put it this way: “We were a propaganda arm of our governments. At the
start, the censors enforced that, but by the end we were our own censors. We
were cheerleaders. I suppose there wasn't an alternative at the time. It was
total war. But, for God's sake, let's not glorify our role. It wasn't good journalism.
It wasn't journalism at all.”
10
America emerged from World War II a very different country than it had been
at the start. The new “military-industrial complex,” as President Eisenhower
dubbed it in a famous 1961 speech, had achieved enormous size and frightening
political influence. In the view of President Eisenhower, it threatened our
traditional values of open, accountable government. The close ties between the
news media and the military not only persisted but grew stronger during the
Cold War.
In 1947, Congress passed the controversial National Security Act which created
a powerful new organization from the bones of the old OSS: The Central Intelligence
Agency. Although the Agency's title gives an impression it merely collects information,
the CIA was, from the start, assigned the task of creating and disseminating
propaganda. In short order, the Agency set about forging secret alliances with
hundreds of journalists, writers, media executives, news organizations, book
publishers, and other influential organizations, with the stated aim of fighting
Communism at all costs (though it dabbled in many other deception activities
as well). Among these people and organizations were some of America's best-known
media figures and most major news organizations.
Frank G. Wisner was the CIA's man in charge of the new propaganda effort
and he once bragged that he could make the world's media play any tune he desired.
Hence, the CIA's global propaganda machine came to be called “Wizner's Wurlitzer.”
11 Internally, the CIA's program was known as Operation Mockingbird.
12 The American public, of course, was kept completely in the
dark about all this because, had they known, they'd have been less likely to
trust those who were lying to them.
In 1975, the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect
to Intelligence Operations revealed much about the CIA's secret media connections
but not everything. Disturbing details continue to emerge. In 2001, for example,
the New York Times reported that the CIA had maintained a close working
relationship with the leading news-wire services such that it could place propaganda
stories directly onto the news wires. This meant that newspaper editors and
other media personnel would accept the false stories without question.
13 It should be stressed that, if this was possible, then covert
censorship of the wire services was also possible.
Have such covert media relationships ceased as a result of exposure? The
truth is, we can never be certain, particularly given the CIA's known history
of secretive and often lawless activity. One thing is known, however: the CIA
and the U.S. military have not exactly gone away, nor has their need to influence
media content and shape American public opinion.
America, once a democratic republic, has gradually morphed into an empire
with over 725 foreign military bases spread around the globe to protect its
sprawling commercial interests.
14 It has boldly declared its right to invade any nation, at
any time. It is now engaged in several major wars simultaneously, with no clear
end in sight.
As the old saying goes, during war, the first casualty is always the truth.
So, if you still trust the U.S. news media to expose government lies, you're
making a serious mistake. For nearly a hundred years, they've actually been
the ones assigned by the government to tell them.
There was a time during the George W. Bush years when both National Public
Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting were administered by former
U.S. government propaganda experts. Some of them are still working there. Just
a coincidence? Whatever the case, such connections shouldn't inspire confidence
in the independence and accuracy of American news.
One final thought: A hallmark of an effective propaganda campaign is consistency
of message across all media sources. The name of the game is to create what
propaganda theorists call “a pseudo-environment.” That is to say, the public
must not be exposed to any credible contradictory information, especially
from news sources they've come to trust. It is important, for example, that
both the right- and left-leaning media are both carrying the same official message.
To make the public believe official lies, all the media must be playing an identical
tune, from The Nation to Fox TV.
It is deeply unsettling, then, that the American news media have been so
remarkably consistent in endorsing the official 9-11 story, despite widespread
dissent from thousands of technical experts, academics, eyewitnesses, government
officials, military officers, intelligence analysts, and informed members of
the general public.
If all this causes you to wonder what might be going on behind the printed
pages, radio speakers, and TV screens of America . . . well, it certainly should.
(Terry Hansen received a master's degree in science journalism from the
University of Minnesota in 1984 and has subsequently worked as a media entrepreneur,
reporter, editor and author.)
The Soviets made a devastating miscalculation: they mistook military power
for power on this planet. Sound familiar?
Mark it on your calendar. It seems we’ve finally entered the Soviet era in America.
You remember the Soviet Union, now almost 20 years in its grave. But who gives
it a second thought today? Even in its glory years that “evil empire” was sometimes
referred to as “the second superpower.” In 1991, after seven decades, it suddenly
disintegrated and disappeared, leaving the United States -- the “sole superpower,”
even the “hyperpower,” on planet Earth -- surprised but triumphant.
The USSR had been heading for the exits for quite a while, not that official
Washington had a clue. At the moment it happened, Soviet “experts” like
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (then director of the CIA) still expected
the Cold War to go
on and on. In Washington, eyes were trained on the might of the Soviet military,
which the Soviet leadership had never stopped feeding, even as its sclerotic
bureaucracy was rotting, its economy (which had ceased to grow in the late 1970s)
was tanking, budget deficits were soaring, indebtedness to other countries was
growing, and social welfare payments were eating into what funds remained. Not
even a vigorous, reformist leader like Mikhail Gorbachev could staunch the rot,
especially when, in the late 1980s, the price of Russian oil fell drastically.
Looking back, the most distinctive feature of the last years of the Soviet
Union may have been the way it continued to pour money into its military --
and its military adventure in Afghanistan -- when it was already going bankrupt
and the society it had built was beginning to collapse around it. In the end,
its aging leaders made a devastating miscalculation. They mistook military power
for power on this planet. Armed to the teeth and possessing a nuclear force
capable of destroying the Earth many times over, the Soviets nonetheless remained
the vastly poorer, weaker, and (except when it came to the arms race) far less
technologically innovative of the two superpowers.
In December 1979, perhaps taking the
bait of the Carter administration whose national security advisor was eager
to see the Soviets bloodied by a “Vietnam” of their own, the Red Army invaded
Afghanistan to support a weak communist government in Kabul. When resistance
in the countryside, led by Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas and backed by the
other superpower, only grew, the Soviets sent in more troops, launched major
offensives, called in air power, and fought on brutally and futilely for a decade
until, in 1989, long after they had been whipped, they withdrew in defeat.
Gorbachev had dubbed Afghanistan
“the
bleeding wound,” and when the wounded Red Army finally limped home, it was
to a country that would soon cease to exist. For the Soviet Union, Afghanistan
had literally proven “the graveyard of empires.” If, at the end, its military
remained standing, the empire didn’t. (And if you don’t already find this description
just a tad eerie, given the present moment in the U.S., you should.)
In Washington, the Bush administration -- G.H.W.’s, not G.W.’s -- declared
victory and then left the much ballyhooed “peace dividend” in the nearest ditch.
Caught off guard by the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington’s consensus
policymakers drew no meaningful lessons from it (just as they had drawn few
that mattered from their Vietnam defeat 16 years earlier).
Quite the opposite, successive American administrations would blindly head
down the very path that had led the Soviets to ruin. They would serially agree
that, in a world without significant enemies, the key to U.S. global power still
was the care and feeding of the American military and the military-industrial
complex that went with it. As the years passed, that military would be sent
ever more regularly into the far reaches of the planet to fight frontier wars,
establish military bases, and finally impose a global Pax Americana on
the planet.
This urge, delusional in retrospect, seemed to reach its ultimate expression
in the second Bush administration, whose infamous “unilateralism” rested on
a belief that no country or even bloc of countries should ever again be allowed
to come close to matching U.S. military power. (As its National Security Strategy
of 2002
put the matter -- and it couldn’t have been blunter on the subject -- the
U.S. was to “build and maintain” its military power “beyond challenge.”)
Bush’s military fundamentalists firmly believed that, in the face of the most
technologically advanced, bulked-up, destructive force around, hostile states
would be “shocked and awed” by a simple demonstration of its power and friendly
ones would have little choice but to come to heel as well. After all, as the
president
said in front of a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in 2007, the U.S.
military was “the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known.”
In this way, far more than the Soviets, the top
officials of the Bush administration mistook military power for power, a gargantuan
misreading of the U.S. economic position in the world and of their moment.
Boundless Military Ambitions
The attacks of September 11, 2001, that “Pearl
Harbor of the twenty-first century,” clinched the deal. In the space the
Soviet Union had deserted, which had been occupied by minor outlaw states like
North Korea for years, there was a new shape-shifting enemy, al-Qaeda (aka Islamic
extremism, aka the new “totalitarianism”), which could be just as big as you
wanted to make it. Suddenly, we were in what the Bush administration instantly
dubbed “the Global War on Terror” (GWOT, one of the worst acronyms ever invented)
-- and this time there would be nothing “cold” about it.
Bush administration officials promptly suggested that they were prepared
to use a newly agile American military to “drain the swamp” of global terrorism.
("While we'll try to find every snake in the swamp, the essence of the strategy
is draining the swamp,"
insisted Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz two weeks after 9/11.)
They
were
prepared, they made clear, to undertake those draining operations against
Islamic “terrorist networks” in no less than 60 countries around the planet.
Their military ambitions, in other words, knew no bounds; nor, it seemed,
did the money and resources which began to flow into the Pentagon, the weapons
industries, the country’s
increasingly militarized intelligence services, mercenary companies like
Blackwater and
KBR that grew fat on a privatizing administration’s war plans and the multi-billion-dollar
no-bid contracts it was eager to proffer, the new Department of Homeland Security,
and a ramped-up, ever more powerful national security state.
As the Pentagon expanded,
taking on ever newer roles, the numbers would prove staggering. By the end
of the Bush years, Washington was
doling out almost twice what the next nine nations combined were spending
on their militaries, while total U.S. military expenditures
came to just under half the world’s total. Similarly, by 2008,
the U.S.
controlled almost 70% of the global arms market. It also had 11 aircraft
carrier battle groups capable of patrolling the world’s seas and oceans at a
time when no power that could faintly be considered a possible future enemy
had more than one.
By then, private contractors had built for the Pentagon
almost 300military bases in Iraq, ranging from tiny combat
outposts to massive
“American towns” holding tens of thousands of troops and private contractors,
with multiple bus lines, PX’s, fast-food “boardwalks,” massage parlors, water
treatment and power plants, barracks, and airfields. They were in the process
of
doing the same in Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, in the
Persian Gulf region generally. This, too, represented a massive investment
in what looked like a permanent occupation of the oil heartlands of the planet.
As right-wing pundit Max Boot
put it after a recent flying tour of America’s global garrisons, the U.S.
possesses military bases that add up to “a virtual American empire of Wal-Mart-style
PXs, fast-food restaurants, golf courses, and gyms.”
Depending on just
what you counted, there were anywhere from 700 to perhaps 1,200 or more
U.S. bases, micro to macro, acknowledged and unacknowledged, around the globe.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon was pouring money into the
wildest blue-skies thinking at its advanced research arm, DARPA, whose budget
grew
by 50%. Through DARPA, well-funded scientists experimented with various
ways to fight
sci-fi-style wars in the near and distant future (at a moment when no one
was ready to put significant government money into blue-skies thinking about,
for instance, how to improve the education of young Americans). The Pentagon
was also pioneering a new form of air power, drone warfare, in which “we” wouldn’t
be within
thousands of miles of the battlefield, and the battlefield would no longer
necessarily be in a country with which we were at war.
It was also embroiled in two disastrous, potentially trillion-dollar wars
(and various global skirmishes) -- and all this at top dollar at a time when
next to no money was being invested in, among other things, the bridges, tunnels,
waterworks, and the like that made up an aging American infrastructure. Except
when it came to victory, the military stood ever taller, while its many missions
expanded exponentially, even as the domestic economy was spinning out of control,
budget deficits were increasing rapidly, the governmental bureaucracy was growing
ever more sclerotic, and indebtedness to other nations was rising by leaps and
bounds.
In other words, in a far wealthier country, another set of leaders, having
watched the Soviet Union implode, decisively embarked on the Soviet path to
disaster.
Military Profligacy
In the fall of 2008, the abyss opened under the U.S. economy, which the Bush
administration had been blissfully ignoring, and millions of people fell into
it. Giant institutions wobbled or crashed; extended unemployment wouldn’t go
away; foreclosures happened on a mind-boggling scale; infrastructure began to
buckle; state budgets were caught in a death grip; teachers’ jobs, another kind
of infrastructure, went down the tubes in startling numbers; and the federal
deficit soared.
Of course, a new president also entered the Oval Office, someone (many voters
believed) intent on winding up (or at least down) Bush’s wars and the delusions
of military omnipotence and technological omniscience that went with them. If
George W. Bush had pushed this country to the edge of disaster, at least his
military policies, as many of his critics saw it, were as extreme and anomalous
as the
cult of executive power his top officials fostered.
But here was the strange thing. In the midst of the Great Recession, under
a new president with assumedly far fewer illusions about American omnipotence
and power, war policy continued to expand in just about every way. The Pentagon
budget rose by Bushian increments in fiscal year 2010; and while the Iraq War
reached a kind of dismal stasis, the new president doubled down in Afghanistan
on entering office -- and then doubled down again before the end of 2009. There,
he “surged”
in multiple
ways. At best, the U.S. was only drawing down one war, in Iraq, to feed
the flames of another.
As in the Soviet Union before its collapse, the exaltation and feeding of
the military at the expense of the rest of society and the economy had by now
become the new normal; so much so that hardly a serious word could be said --
lest you not “support our troops” -- when it came to ending the American way
of war or downsizing the global mission or ponying up
the funds demanded of Congress to pursue war preparations and war-making.
Even when, after years of astronomical growth, Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates
began to talk about cost-cutting at the Pentagon, it was in the service
of the reallocation of ever more money to war-fighting. Here was how the
New York Times
summed up what reduction actually meant for our ultimate super-sized institution
in tough times: “Current budget plans project growth of only 1 percent in the
Pentagon budget, after inflation, over the next five years.” Only 1%
growth -- at a time when state budgets, for instance, are being
slashed to the bone. Like the Soviet military, the Pentagon, in other words,
is planning to remain obese whatever else goes down.
Meanwhile, the “anti-war” president has been overseeing the expansion of
the new normal on many fronts, including the expanding
size of the Armyitself. In fact, when it comes to the
Global War on Terror -- even with the name now in disuse -- the profligacy can
still take your breath away.
Consider, for instance, the $2.2 billion Host Nation Trucking contract the
Pentagon uses to
pay protection money to Afghan security companies which, in turn,
slip some part of those payments to the Taliban to let American supplies
travel safely on Afghan roads. Or if you don’t want to think about how your
tax dollar supports the Taliban, consider the $683,000 the Pentagon
spent, according to the Washington Post, to “renovate a cafe that
sells ice cream and Starbucks coffee” at its base/prison in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba. Or the $773,000 used there “to remodel a cinder-block building to house
a KFC/Taco Bell restaurant,” or the $7.3 million spent on baseball and football
fields, or the $60,000 batting cage, or a promised $20,000 soccer cage, all
part of the approximately two billion dollars that have gone into the American
base and prison complex that Barack Obama promised to,
but can’t, close.
Or what about the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, that 104-acre, almost
three-quarters-of-a-billion-dollar, 21-building
homage to the American-mall-as-fortified-citadel? It costs
more than $1.5 billion a year to run, and bears about as much relationship
to an “embassy” as McDonald’s does to a neighborhood hamburger joint.
According to a recent audit, millions of dollars in “federal property” assigned
to what is essentially a vast command center for the region, including 159 of
the embassy's 1,168 vehicles, are missing or unaccounted for.
And as long as we’re talking about expansion in distant lands, how about
the Pentagon’s most recent
construction
plans in Central Asia, part of a prospective “mini-building boom” there.
They are to include an anti-terrorism training center to be constructed for
a bargain basement $5.5 million in... no, not Toledo or Akron or El Paso, but
the
combustible city of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan. And that’s just one of several
projects there and in neighboring Tajikistan that are reportedly to be funded
out of the U.S. Central Command’s “counter-narcotics fund” (and ultimately,
of course, your pocket).
Or consider a particularly striking example of military expansion under President
Obama, superbly reported by the Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung and Greg
Jaffe in a piece
headlined, “U.S. 'secret war' expands globally as Special Operations forces
take larger role.” As a story, it sank without a trace in a country evidently
unfazed by the idea of having its forces garrisoned and potentially readying
to fight everywhere on the planet.
Here’s how the piece began:
“Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat
zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly
expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups,
according to senior military and administration officials. Special Operations
forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries,
compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year.”
Now, without opening an atlas, just try to name any 75 countries on
this planet -- more than one-third, that is, of the states belonging to the
United Nations. And yet U.S. special operatives are now engaging in war, or
preparing for war, or training others to do so, or
covertly collecting intelligence in that many countries across Asia, Africa,
the Middle East, and Latin America. Fifteen more than in the Bush era.
Whatever it is or isn’t called, this remains Bush’s Global War on Terror
on an expansionist trajectory. DeYoung and Jaffe quote an unnamed “senior military
official” saying that the Obama administration has allowed "things that the
previous administration did not," and report that Special Operations commanders
are now “a far more regular presence at the White House” than in the Bush years.
Not surprisingly, those Special Operations forces have themselves expanded
in the first year and a half of the Obama presidency and, for fiscal year 2011,
with 13,000 of them already deployed abroad, the administration has requested
a 5.7% hike in their budget to $6.3 billion.
Once upon a time, Special Operations forces got their name because they were
small and “special.” Now, they are, in essence, being transformed into a covert
military within the military and, as befits their growing size,
reports Noah Shachtman of the Wired's Danger Room, the Army Special
Forces alone are slated to get a new $100 million “headquarters” in northern
Afghanistan. It will cover about 17 acres and will include a “communications
building, Tactical Operations Center, training facility, medical aid station,
Vehicle Maintenance Facility... dining facility, laundry facility, and a kennel
to support working dogs... Supporting facilities include roads, power production
system and electrical distribution, water well, non-potable water production,
water storage, water distribution, sanitary sewer collection system, communication
manhole/duct system, curbs, walkways, drainage and parking.”
This headquarters, adds Shachtman, will take a year to build, “at which point,
the U.S. is allegedly supposed to begin drawing down its forces in Afghanistan.
Allegedly.” And mind you, the Special Operations troops are but one expanding
part of the U.S. military.
Creeping Gigantism
The first year and a half of the Obama administration has seen a continuation
of what could be considered the monumental socialist-realist era of American
war-making (including a decision to
construct another huge, Baghdad-style “embassy” in Islamabad, Pakistan).
This sort of creeping gigantism, with all its assorted cost overruns and private
perks, would undoubtedly have seemed familiar to the Soviets. Certainly
no less familiar will be the near decade the U.S. military has spent, increasingly
disastrously, in the Afghan graveyard.
Drunk on war as Washington may be, the U.S. is still not the Soviet Union
in 1991 -- not yet. But it’s not the triumphant “sole superpower” anymore either.
Its global power is
visibly waning, its ability to win wars distinctly in question, its economic
viability open to doubt. It has been
transformed from a can-do into a can’t-do nation, a fact only highlighted
by the ongoing BP catastrophe and “rescue” in the Gulf of Mexico. Its airports
are
less shiny and more Third World-like every year. Unlike France or China,
it has not a mile of high-speed rail. And when it comes to the future, especially
the creation and support of innovative industries in alternative energy, it’s
chasingthe
pack. It is increasingly a low-end service economy,
losing good jobs that will never return.
And if its armies come home in defeat... watch out.
In 1991, the Soviet Union suddenly evaporated. The Cold War was over. Like
many wars, it seemed to have an obvious winner and an obvious loser. Nearly
20 years later, as the U.S. heads down the Soviet road to disaster -- even if
the world can’t imagine what a bankrupt America might mean -- it’s far clearer
that, in the titanic struggle of the two superpowers that we came to call the
Cold War, there were actually two losers, and that, when the “second superpower”
left the scene, the first was already heading for the exits, just ever so slowly
and in a state of self-intoxicated self-congratulation. Nearly every decision
in Washington since then, including Barack Obama’s to expand both the Afghan
War and the war on terror, has only made what, in 1991, was one possible path
seem like fate itself.
Call up the Politburo in Washington. We’re in trouble.
Please, let us not forget the US’s biggest budget category,(thanks to
Wikipedia):
Department of Defense.
Including non-DOD expenditures, defense spending was approximately 25–29%
of budgeted expenditures and 38–44% of estimated tax revenues. According
to the Congressional Budget Office, defense spending grew 9% annually on
average from fiscal year 2000–2009.[19]
As should be pointed out in every conversation about military spending,
there is a very long tail. The costs of people serving now are (barley)
accounted for.
They cost a lot more, for a lot longer when they get back here. If you
send them overseas and put them in harms way, you probably should be accounting
for the ongoing cost of caring for them over the long term. I believe its
even in their contract.
On Wednesday, Obama said he “would try to block the court-ordered release
of photos showing U.S. troops abusing prisoners.” The release, which was to
be the result of a Freedom of Information Act request made by the ACLU, had
been reasonable in the final weeks of April, but today, Obama chose to come
out against the release.
According to
the Associated Press, “out of concern [that] the pictures would "further
inflame anti-American opinion" and endanger U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan”
Obama planned to block them.
Obama intends to block the release of the photos because they may negatively
impact American empire and American military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Gen. Ray Odierno, a prime architect of “the surge” in Iraq, and Gen. David Petraeus
influenced Obama’s decision after informing the administration that they were
afraid the photos will “cost American lives.”
Obama suggested that the “photos had already served their purpose in investigations
of "a small number of individuals” and "the individuals who were involved have
been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken."
Also, Obama made the argument that "these photos that were requested in this
case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful
images that we remember from Abu Ghraib."
When choosing to make a “mockery” out of his “promise of transparency and accountability”
(as one member of the ACLU put it), Obama is fine with contending that if information
requested does not show something worse than said previous atrocity or does
not show that something more inhumane happened the information should not be
released.
Even if the information would give further credence to the argument that the
Bush Administration tortured (which many in the corporate news media are still
reluctant to outright accept as they continue to cling to the “enhanced interrogation
technique” euphemism when discussing “torture”), the fact that it does not top
the brutality of a batch of previous photos means that the ACLU’s FOIA request
should not be fulfilled.
The ACLU released
a response to Obama’s decision, which was written by Anthony D. Romero,
Executive Director of the ACLU:
The Obama administration's adoption of the stonewalling tactics and opaque
policies of the Bush administration flies in the face of the president's
stated desire to restore the rule of law, to revive our moral standing in
the world and to lead a transparent government. This decision is particularly
disturbing given the Justice Department's failure to initiate a criminal
investigation of torture crimes under the Bush administration.
"It is true that these photos would be disturbing; the day we are no longer
disturbed by such repugnant acts would be a sad one. In America, every fact
and document gets known – whether now or years from now. And when these
photos do see the light of day, the outrage will focus not only on the commission
of torture by the Bush administration but on the Obama administration's
complicity in covering them up. Any outrage related to these photos should
be due not to their release but to the very crimes depicted in them. Only
by looking squarely in the mirror, acknowledging the crimes of the past
and achieving accountability can we move forward and ensure that these atrocities
are not repeated.
"If the Obama administration continues down this path, it will betray not
only its promises to the American people, but its commitment to this nation's
most fundamental principles. President Obama has said we should turn the
page, but we cannot do that until we fully learn how this nation veered
down the path of criminality and immorality, who allowed that to happen
and whose lives were mutilated as a result. Releasing these photos – as
painful as it might be – is a critical step toward that accounting. The
American people deserve no less."
Obama said of the Freedom of Information Act in a January 21 memo, “The government
should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might
be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed,
or because of speculative or abstract fears.”
But, on matters of American empire or “state secrets,” the administration
is as bad as Bush if not worse.
Robert Gibbs’ press briefing on the reversal shows just how poor a case
the administration has for keeping these photos from being released:
QUESTION: Can you go over the sequence of events that led to this thought
process? Because, on April 24th, when the Pentagon was explaining its decision
to release the photos, it said that -- the spokesman said that there was
a feeling that the case had pretty much run its course.
GIBBS: Uh-huh.
QUESTION: And now you’re saying that the president feels that there’s a
strong argument to be made...
GIBBS: Because the argument that the president has asked his legal team
to make is not an argument that the previous legal team made in that case.
They argued a couple of different things, including, a law enforcement exception.
And the judge ruled that, to seek a law enforcement exception, you have
to -- you have to disclose the name of the person that would be -- that
harm would be derived for in seeking that exception. This is a different
argument that the president thinks is compelling.
QUESTION: Well, when did he decide that it was important to make that argument?
Did one of the lawyers come to him and say...
GIBBS: No. He came to the lawyers.
QUESTION: And when did all that...
GIBBS: That was a meeting that was held last week in the Oval Office.
QUESTION: Robert, if that was such a compelling case, why was that
not weighed in April then? Because it seems like -- was there a failure
here at the White House in the first go-round in April to fully weigh the
national security implications?
GIBBS: The argument that the president seeks to make is one that hasn’t
been made before. The -- I’m not going to get into blame for this or that.
Understanding that there was significant legal momentum in these cases prior
to the president entering into office, we are now at a point where it is
likely that some stay will be asked to prevent the release of these photos.
And I believe the date -- I think we have until June 8th to appeal -- to
seek review of those decisions by the Second Circuit.
QUESTION: But on April 24th, you also said, quote, “The Department of Justice
decided, based on the ruling, the court ruling, is that it was, quote, hopeless
to appeal.”
GIBBS: Right. QUESTION: Now you’re saying it’s not hopeless. GIBBS: Well,
based on the argument that -- yes, I said that it was hopeless based on
the argument that was made during the course of the original FOIA lawsuit,
the appeal, the three-judge ruling, and the decision to decline the full
circuit to make that -- to make those determinations. The president isn’t
-- what I’m saying to you, Ed, is the president isn’t going back to remake
the argument that has been made. The president is going -- has asked his
legal team to go back and make a new argument based on national security.
QUESTION: This new argument -- if you’re saying, basically, that this could
put troops in further harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan, Former Vice President
Cheney, General Hayden, others have made the same argument about releasing
the so-called torture memos. Do you have any regrets about putting those
memos out? They’ve made the same argument about them? GIBBS: No. Well, I’ll use the example I’ve used on this before,
Ed. You didn’t begin to report on enhanced interrogation techniques at the
release of the OLC memos, did you?
QUESTION: No.
GIBBS: OK. The -- I’m saying...
QUESTION: (Inaudible)
GIBBS: Hold on. I’m also sensing that the graphic that CNN uses to denote
what happens when somebody gets waterboarded wasn’t likely developed based
on reading memos that were released three weeks ago. The existence of enhanced
interrogation techniques were noted by the former administration in speeches
that they gave. You read about the enhanced interrogation techniques in
autobiographies written by members of that former administration. The notion...
QUESTION: The graphics would not also be based on any prisoner photos you
might release because we already know that people were abused in prisons.
So why not put them out there?
GIBBS: I’m not sure that you’d do a graphic of a photo.
QUESTION: No. A graphic of someone being abused. We’ve all seen Abu Ghraib
photos, and you were saying about the photos back in April, lack, it’s already
exhausted and, essentially, these photos are going to come out anyway.
GIBBS: Based on the previous legal argument, yes. The previous legal argument
denoted that the case had been lost. There’s a new legal argument that’s
being made. My sense is, Ed, why do you do a graphic on CNN?
QUESTION: We’re trying to show people -- explain to people... GIBBS: OK. The president believes that the existence of the photos
themselves does not actually add to the understanding that detainee abuse
happened, was investigated, that actions were taken by those that did, indeed,
or might have undertaken potential abuse of detainees. And those cases were
all dating back to finishing in 2004.
GIBBS: The president doesn’t believe the release of a photo surrounding
that investigation does the anything to illuminate the existence of that
investigation, only to provide some portion of sensationality. QUESTION: Robert, is that really his role to decide whether or not
it illuminates? That’s not the president of the United States’ role to decide,
well, this is information will illuminate for the people, and this information
isn’t.
GIBBS: No, the -- the -- the role of the president in this situation is
as commander-in-chief. And if he determines that, through the release of
these photos, that they pose a threat to those that serve to protect our
freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan through the illumination of whatever, he
can make a determination to ask his legal team to go back to court and make
a legal argument that he doesn’t believe was made and provides the most
salient case and most important points for not releasing these photos.
Those determinations are, indeed, made by this president and -- and -- and
are being made.
QUESTION: The Bush administration has obviously made the argument that releasing
these specific photographs will endanger troops, and they did so in the
way that you described, with -- with seeking the FOIA exemption for law
enforcement personnel.
GIBBS: Right.
(interruption)
QUESTION: The specific avenue that your -- that your legal team’s going
to go, you’re not sure if it’s going to be going back to the district court
or...
GIBBS: I don’t know the -- I’ll check with -- put that -- we’ll check with
-- with those guys specifically. I think, in some ways, they’re looking
at whether it is to go to a lower court or to go to the Supreme Court.
QUESTION: And then just to follow up on the new argument, so are there specific
-- is there specific case law arguments that the president knows that exist
that were not used? Because it’s -- I find it hard to believe that the Bush
administration didn’t turn under every rock to try to find an argument to
do this.
GIBBS: Well, the president doesn’t believe that was the case. And the president,
after reviewing the case, believes that -- that we have a compelling argument.
[emphasis added]
Already reluctant to have the Justice Department enforce the rule of law
and hold investigations and prosecutions for torture and crimes against humanity,
how do arguments that the president can decide what illuminates a situation
and what doesn’t, that the president didn’t misjudge the national security implications
of the photos, and that the press doesn’t need these photos to report on treatment
of detainees help the administration at all?
Of course, the press needs these photos to be released so they can cover
the issue of torture and war crimes, which were part of Bush Administration
policy. What else is going to motivate them to cover the issue? Ethics and morals?
This reversal is just one event in a series of events that have occurred
in relation to state secrets, accountability, and transparency since Obama was
inaugurated.
Obama’s vow “to open government more than ever” was
sharply contradicted
by his Justice Department which chose to “defend Bush administration decisions
to keep secret many documents about domestic wiretapping, data collection on
travelers and U.S. citizens, and interrogation of suspected terrorists.”
In March, the Obama administration
continued a tradition
of the Bush Administration and, citing state-secrets privileges, they, like
the Bush Administration, continued to stall a suit brought by the al-Haramain
Islamic Foundation, which claimed that the government illegally wiretapped and
violated the charity’s right to due process and freedom of speech because the
government thought the charity was funding terrorism.
The Justice Department
defended torture memo author John Yoo and Attorney General Eric Holder defended
the decision claiming that it was in “the best interest of the United State.”
To mark Obama’s 100days in office, Sen. Russ Feingold released a “report
card” on “actions to restore the rule of law.” Obama’s actions on state
secrets earned him the worst grades.
Feingold cited the fact that Obama had “invoked the state secrets privilege
in three cases in the first 100 days -- Al Haramain Islamic Foundation v.
Obama, Mohammed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, and Jewel v. NSA” and had not taken
a position on the State Secrets Protection Act.
Obama “issued an immediate halt to the military commission proceedings for
prosecuting detainees and filed a request in Federal District Court in Washington
to stay
habeas corpus proceedings there.” But, most recently, the administration
is
seriously considering reviving military commissions for prosecuting Guantanamo
detainees.
Now, Larisa Alexandrovna has
compiled an article that suggests the “Obama Justice Department is continuing
to cover up Bush-Era crimes.”
The decision to hold back the photos is another blow to freedom and democracy
that follows a plethora of blows which have occurred in this decade.
The logic that these photos will create terrorism is patently false. It’s
not the photos of torture that kill our soldiers, but the fact that the U.S.
military and CIA tortures or tortured that creates or created terrorism.
We as a people must seriously consider how this decision to hide photos reflects
our society’s values and how it shows our unwillingness to demand accountability
and the enforcement of the rule of law.
What does the Obama Administration really want? The American people and its
military forces to be safe from “terrorism” or the American people to stop demanding
that the Obama Administration investigate and prosecute Bush Administration
officials for torture and crimes against humanity?
CAMPOS: America, after all, is a meritocracy, not an aristocracy. We
have no princes of the royal blood, and whatever position a person enjoys
in life must be earned. This, indeed, is the basis for one of the most common
criticisms of affirmative action.... On the other hand, you have the career
of William Kristol. Kristol, the son of neo-conservative doyen Irving Kristol,
was just fired by The New York Times.... Nothing illustrated Kristol's influence
and importance better than the Times' decision to add him to their Op-Ed
page. As his previous stint at Time magazine had already demonstrated,
Kristol was a horrible columnist. His writing
was boring, he made a lot of factual errors and his point of view was invariably
about as surprising as that of a member of Stalin's Politburo.
His work was, in the cruel but fair judgment of Salon's Glenn Greenwald,
"sloppy, error-plagued and incomparably hackish."
So how did he end up with such a sweet gig? (Especially given that the
Times already employed an incomparably more talented conservative columnist
in the person of David Brooks.) The answer goes back to Farley's observation
about the extreme nepotism of the contemporary right-wing media machine.
Kristol may be an utter mediocrity, but he's
an extraordinarily well-connected utter mediocrity.... Which
brings me to this charming vignette, courtesy of blog commenter Harry Hopkins:
I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent
political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof.
Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first
Bush administration.
The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle's chief of staff,
and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked
to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place
there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat
Moynihan, then Nixon's domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship
at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican
National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard
Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach
at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.
With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he
thought of affirmative action. 'I oppose it,' Irving replied. 'It subverts
meritocracy.'
Many Republicans today have a different take on the desirability of meritocracy.
A good friend noted recently how little we hear of Iraq and Afghanistan in
the news anymore, and further noted the deafening silence regarding those ongoing
wars from what he described as "dishwater left-leaning political activists"
whose disengagement from the issue, according to him, makes them full of something
I can't repeat in print. That bogus disengagement, he asserts, stems from the
fact that Obama is in office now, so everything must be OK. It isn't, of course,
but it is hard to miss the fact that we haven't heard much about the wars, or
the protesters, since a couple of Januarys ago.
Wed, 04/28/2010 - 08:16 — Bill O'Rights (not verified)
Ron Paul's Opposition Continues - he was right from the beginning, yet
Pitt give zero credit, while making reference to 'crazies in the street'
stereotype of a monolithic tea party movement - which it is not. How about
doing something constructive and pointing out the common ground between
peace lovers on the Left and peace lovers on the Right? How about taking
the opportunity to examine this failure to end the war as evidence of the
Lie of the Left/Right paradigm itself? Don't be a dinosaur Mr. Pitt - there
is a large population in the streets protesting this war and you dismiss
them as 'teabaggers' while failing to distinguish the Paul group from the
Palin group.
All who draw the sword will die by the sword. -- Yeshua Ha-Notsri,
Palestinian dissident, c. 33 CE.
I.
As we all know – or rather, as everyone but those who climb and claw their way
to the top of power's greasy pole knows – the effects of war are vast, unforeseeable,
long-lasting -- and uncontrollable. The far-reaching ripples of the turbulence
will churn against distant shores and hidden corners, then roil back upon you
in ways you could never imagine, for generations, even centuries.
Nor is "victory" in war proof against these deleterious effects. For the
brutalization, moral coarsening, corruption and concentration of elite power
that attend every war do not simply disappear from a society when the fighting
stops. They persist, like microbes, in myriad forms, working with slow, corrosive
force to degrade and deform the victors. Indeed, victory in battle often leads
a society to enshrine war's most pernicious attributes: violence is ennobled,
and becomes entrenched as an ever-ready instrument of national policy. Militarism
is exalted, the way of peace dishonored: cries of "Appeasers! Cowards! Traitors!"
greet every approach that fails to brandish the threat of extreme violence,
that fails to "keep all options on the table."
The apparent "lesson" of victory – that there can be no right without armed
might to win and safeguard it – quickly degenerates into the belief that armed
might is right. (William
Astore has an excellent article here on how the collision with Nazi Germany
infected America's military with a continuing admiration for the German war
machine.) Military power becomes equated with moral worth, and the ability to
wreak savage, unimaginable destruction through armed violence -- via thoughtless
obedience to the orders of "superiors" – becomes a cherished attribute of society.
War is no longer seen as a vast, horrific failure of the human spirit, a
scandalous betrayal of our common humanity, a sickening tragedy of irrevocable
loss and inconsolable suffering – although this is its inescapable reality,
even in a "good" war, for a "just" cause. (And of course no nation or faction
has ever gone to war without declaring that its cause is just.) Instead of lamenting
war, and girding for it, if at all, only in the most dire circumstances, with
the most extreme reluctance, the infected society celebrates it at every turn.
No national occasion –
even
a sporting event! – is complete without bristling displays of military firepower,
and pious tributes to those wreaking violence around the world in blind obedience
to their superiors.
Oddly enough, when a modern nation consciously adopts a "warrior ethos,"
it casts aside -- openly, even gleefully -- whatever virtue that ethos has historically
claimed for itself, such as courage in battle and honor toward adversaries.
In its place come the adulation of overwhelming technological firepower and
the rabid demonization of the enemy (or the perceived enemy, or even the "suspected"
enemy), who is stripped of all rights, all human dignity, and subject to "whatever
it takes" to break him down or destroy him.
Thus our American militarists exult in the advanced hardware that allows
"soldiers" to slaughter people from thousands of miles away, with missiles,
bombs and bullets fired from lurking, unreachable drones high in the sky. (A
recent study shows that even by the most conservative reckoning of who is
or isn't a "militant," at least one third of the hundreds killed in the Bush-Obama
drone campaigns in Pakistan are clearly civilians.) The drone "warriors" --
often living in complete safety and comfort -- see nothing but a bloodless
image on a screen; they face no physical threat at all. This is assassination,
not combat; it reeks of cowardice, and dehumanizes everyone it touches, the
victims and the button-pushers alike. Yet our militarists -- most of whom, of
course, have somehow never found the time to fight the wars they cheer for --
wax orgasmic about this craven weaponry. In the transvaluation of values that
militarism produces, cowardice becomes a martial virtue.
Barack Obama, the Nobel Peace Laureate,
pushes forward with plans for the "Prompt Global Strike" system of "conventional"
super-missiles that can rain down massive death -- unstoppable, undeterrable,
without warning -- anywhere on the planet within an hour. All this, while expanding
shorter-range missile "defense" systems that bristle with blatantly offensive
potential, and intent, all over the world. Plus spending billions to "modernize"
the nuclear arsenal, ensuring that it stays effective enough to murder the entire
earth, while weeding out some "redundant" warheads as a PR gesture.
Meanwhile, the drone programs -- emblazoned with names that proudly proclaim
their savage nature: "Predators" and "Reapers," launching "Hellfire" missiles
into sleeping villages -- keep expanding relentlessly.
As noted by Nick Turse --
who is doing invaluable work detailing
the
deadly nuts and bolts of the militarist empire and its profiteers -- the
Pentagon is drooling over visions of vast robotic forces filling the heavens
and roaming the earth, even down to the smallest crevice. He rightly notes the
main purpose of this massively funded R&D: to make war "easier," less deadly
to "our side," and thus more palatable to the public:
This means bigger, badder, faster drones – armed to the teeth – with
sensor systems to monitor wide swathes of territory and the ability to loiter
overhead for days on end waiting for human targets to appear and, in due
course, be vaporized by high-powered munitions. It’s a future built upon
advanced technologies designed to make targeted killings – remote-controlled
assassinations – ever more effortless.
... For the Air Force, such a prospect is the stuff of dreams, a bright
future for unmanned, hypersonic lethality; for the rest of the planet, it’s
a potential nightmare from which there may be no waking.
But while Turse outlines this potential nightmare in grim detail (the whole
piece should be read in full), we are of course beset by present nightmares
in horrific plenty. And few are more chilling than the ruling establishment's
astonishingly swift acceptance of outright torture as an open tool of national
policy. This acceptance not only includes the increasingly frenzied praise and
championing of torture by the
circle of war criminals and accomplices led by Dick Cheney; in slightly
more restrained tones, it goes right across the board among the political and
media elite. Torture is now nothing more than a topic for "debate" -- debates
which center largely on the relative "effectiveness" of various torture techniques,
or else on mindless (not to mention heartless) hairsplitting over the meaning
of the word "torture."
There is of course a myth that Barack Obama has "ended" the practice of torture.
This is
not even remotely true. For one thing,
as we have
often noted here, the Army Field Manual that Obama has adopted as his interrogation
standard permits many practices that any rational person would consider torture.
For another, we have no way of verifying what techniques are actually being
used by the government's innumerable "security" and intelligence agencies, by
the covert units of the military -- and by other entities whose very existence
is still unknown. These agencies are almost entirely self-policed; they investigate
themselves, they report on themselves to the toothless Congressional "oversight"
committees; we simply have to take these organizations -- whose entire raison
d'etre is deceit, deception, lawlessness and subterfuge -- at their word. And
of course, we have no way of knowing what is being done in the torture chambers
of foreign lands where the United States often "outsources" its captives.
Finally, even if the comforting bedtime story of Obama's ban of torture techniques
in interrogation were true, there remains his ardent championing of the
right to seize anyone on earth -- without a warrant, without producing any evidence
whatsoever of wrongdoing -- and hold them indefinitely, often for years on end,
in a legal limbo, with no inherent rights whatsoever, beyond whatever narrowly
constricted, ever-changing, legally baseless and often farcical "hearings" and
tribunals the captors deign to allow them. Incarceration under these conditions
is itself an horrendous act of torture, no matter what else might happen to
the captive. Yet Obama has actively, avidly applied this torture, and has gone
to court numerous times to defend this torture, and to expand the use of this
torture.
Many thousands of innocent people have already been forced through the meat
grinder of this torture -- at one point early in the Iraq War, the Red Cross
estimated that 70-90 percent of the more than 20,000 Iraqis being held by the
Americans as "suspected terrorists" were not guilty of any crime whatsoever,
much less 'terrorism'. And that is just a single snapshot, at a single point
in time, of the vast gulag that America has wrapped around the earth -- a gulag
where
many have been murdered outright, not just tortured or unjustly imprisoned.
And it is still going on, with scarcely a demur across the bipartisan establishment.
The heinous and dishonorable practice of torture, physical and psychological,
is now an intrinsic, openly established element of American society.
Murder, cowardice, torture, dishonor: these are fruits -- and the distinguishing
characteristics -- of the militarized society. What Americans once would not
do even to Nazis with the blood of millions on their hands, they now do routinely
to weak and wretched captives seized on little or no evidence of wrongdoing
at all. We are deep in the darkness, and hurtling deeper, headlong, all the
time.
II.
Let's not kid ourselves, however. The militarism that has now gained such a
strangulating ascendancy over American life did not drop down suddenly from
the sky (or arrive on the hijacked bus that Bush and Cheney drove to the White
House). Although this militarism has now reached unprecedented levels of institutional
and political dominance, there has always been a strong warlike strain running
through American history -- indeed, through its pre-history as well, as Fred
Anderson and Andrew Cayton demonstrate in their book,
Dominion of War, detailing the decisive influence of war and imperialism
on America's development over the past 500 years.
Nor is it a peculiarly American problem. As Caroline Alexander notes in her
remarkable new work,
The War That Killed Achilles:
If we took any period of a hundred years in the last five thousand, it
has been calculated, we could expect, on average, 94 of those years to be
occupied with large-scale conflicts in one or more parts of the world. This
enduring, seemingly ineradicable fact of war is ... as intrinsic and tragic
a component of the human condition as our very mortality.
We human beings have been shaped by millions of years of genetic breakage
and mutation, all of which is still on-going. We are compounds of chaos, ignorance
and error. Our psyches are frail and variegated things, isolated, with each
individual consciousness formed from a unique and ever-shifting coalescence
of billions of brain cells firing (and misfiring) in infinite, unrepeatable
combinations. Beneath this electrical superstructure lie mechanical rhythms
and erratic surges of instinct and impulse, dark, hormonal tides and drives
that never reach the plane of awareness.
In the infancy of our species we began to cling -- fiercely, in fear and
desire -- to patterns of behavior, emotion and thought that seemed to bring
some sort of order, some containment of the whirlwind within us, and some protection
from the dangers, known and unknown, that lurked outside. We began to do "whatever
it takes" to preserve these patterns from the ever-present threat of their dissolution
in the whirlwind, to impose them, by violence if necessary, on the recalcitrant
material of reality -- including the always-unknowable, impenetrable reality
of the Other, those mysterious combinations outside our isolated consciousness.
The patterns become ingrained, they sink into the substrate where they operate
unquestioned and unseen, they become "natural," the way that things must be.
Domination and obedience are among the strongest, and most enduring, of these
patterns, taking multitudinous forms -- a "local habitation and a name" -- in
the ever-changing circumstances of existence. War is their expression writ large.
It is in us, it comes from us.
But to acknowledge war's intrinsic, universal character does not absolve
us of the need to resist it. To say, "Oh, that's just human nature; it's always
been this way and always will be this way," is not only a lazy, timorous acquiescence
to base instinct, it also posits a settled, even eternal quality to human nature
and human consciousness that simply does not and cannot exist. To go against
war, to step outside the ingrained behavioral patterns of domination and obedience
is indeed an "unnatural" act -- and it feels unnatural, it feels strange, and
raw, and frightening. But the deeper fear -- of psychic and physical dissolution
-- that lies at the foundation of these ever-more destructive patterns can only
be faced down, changed, and wrenched into some more benevolent pattern by embracing
the risk and discomfort of stepping forth, of stepping beyond -- literally,
"transgressing" -- the boundaries of a wholly imaginary (or even hallucinatory)
"human nature."
The whirlwind that characterizes the imperfect, breaking, misfiring, evolving
reality of human consciousness is not only a producer of (very understandable)
deep-seated fears; it is also a force for liberation. Because our nature is
not ultimately fixed, we can, literally and figuratively, burn new connections
in our brains, we can enlarge our consciousness and extend our empathetic understanding
of those strange Others. And we have been doing this, in fits and starts, in
lurches and staggers, with much backsliding and many wrong turns -- indeed,
in ignorance and error -- for as long as we have been creatures cursed and gifted
with self-awareness. We do have the capacity, the space, to resist the patterns
of domination and obedience, to seek out new ways of seeing the world, of being
in the world, of communing with others.
This seems, to me, a worthwhile thing to be getting on with during our painfully
brief time on the earth, during our infinitesimal window of opportunity to make
some small contribution toward pushing the project of being human -- or rather,
becoming human -- down the road, at least a few more steps, in the direction
of a better understanding, a broader consciousness, a greater enlightenment.
USA Gun Owners Buy 14 Million Plus Guns In 2009 – More Than 21 of the
Worlds Standing Armies Combined.
This is an evaluation of overall firearms and ammunition purchases based
on low end numbers per Federal NIC instacheck data base Statistics. The
numbers presented are only PART of the overall numbers of arms and ammunition
that have been sold.
Well shouldn't the above be reason enough to eliminate the officially
sanctioned War Department on The Potomac. Ain't no fuckin' way any country
in the world is gonna take over Arkansas or Idaho so no need to keep up
the Pentagon pretense eh? Of course we know it's real purpose is as a protection
racket for The American Capital Syndicate.
We' Merikans seem to like to blow things up. Warm fuzzies all around
here in The Homeland.
The Obama administration is seeking to increase the obscenely bloated U.S.
Defense Department budget to a whopping $708 billion for fiscal year 2011, 3.4%
above 2010’s record level, The Wall Street Journal reported.
While the overall budget deficit will balloon to a staggering $1.6 trillion
in 2011, the result of massive tax cuts for the rich, declining revenues, a
by-product of capitalism’s economic meltdown, imperial adventures abroad and
general corporate malfeasance (the old tax-dodge grift), the administration
plans to cut $250 billion over three years from non-military “discretionary
spending” on domestic social programs.
However, as the World Socialist Web Site points out: “President Barack Obama
has done nothing to reverse decades of wage stagnation, mounting poverty, and
attacks on the social welfare system. On the contrary, following George W. Bush,
he has seized on the crisis to redistribute wealth to a tiny financial elite
through the ongoing bailout of the finance industry.”
It is no small irony that despite stark budget figures and an even bleaker
future for the American working class, Washington Technology reported January
28 that the “29 largest publicly traded defense contractors increased their
use of offshore subsidiaries by 26 percent from 2003 to 2008.”
It’s not the Internet that has killed newspapers …
Instead, he said, it’s corporate greed. “These newspapers have slit their
own throats,” he said. “Good riddance.”
Moore said that newspapers, bought up by corporations in the last generation,
have pursued profits at the expense of news gathering. By basing their businesses
on advertising over circulation, newspaper owners have neglected their true
economic base and core constituency, he said…
And Moore cited newspapers like those in Baltimore or Detroit, his home
town, with firing reporters that cover subjects that affect the community.
Ultimately, he said, this was self-defeating. It would be like GM deciding
to discourage people from learning how to drive, he said.
“It’s their own greed, their own stupidity,” he said…
I don’t buy all the hype that the internet is even the primary culprit
of the demise of journalism. The primary culprit is the same as it is all
over the country, in every industry and in government: equity extraction.
Let me explain, in short: when executives expect unrealistic profits
of 20% and higher per annum on businesses something has got to give. It’s
an unnatural and unsustainable growth rate. For the first ten or so years
of a small to medium size company’s life? Sure. But when you are 3M, or
GE? Unrealistic and ultimately impossible.
So, when such rates cannot be achieved by organic growth in the business,
executives start shaving off perceived fat and before they know it they’re
cutting off the muscle and then shaving off bone chips. And when they’ve
gotten to the bone chips they borrow other people’s money to buy new companies,
load up those companies with debt and extract equity form them and then
because it looks like the parent is still growing award themselves huge
bonuses. It’s a shell game.
That is what has happened to the news industry in America. The excessive
obsession with unnaturally high profits has led to a vicious circle of cutting
budgets, providing less services, which is then followed by even more drastic
cuts. The local San Antonio paper is a great example of this. Twenty years
ago there were two large dailies in my hometown. Both competed with each
other for real scoops. Both had book reviews by local writers, providing
local jobs. Both covered the local arts and sports scene. Both covered local
politics in depth and local and state news in depth. Both had vigorous investigative
teams. Both had bureaus in Mexico and both had offices and reporters on
the ground in DC.
And then corner offices of Gannet and Harte-Hanks were populated with
Kinsey-esque managers and the rout was on … So, today, San Antonio has one
daily that is as flimsy and tiny as the local alternative … And 80% of this
happened before … the internet. All in the name of higher industry profits–not
some overwhelming fear of the world wide inter-tubes. So, who’s profiting?
Certainly not the intellectual vigor of the locals? And certainly not the
writers who are all now ‘journalism entreprenuers.’ The only people who
profited are the executives who obsessed over profits, to lard up their
own bonus pool …
You can provide a public service with small profits for a long, long
time, but if you demand large ones you will destroy it. Just ask the big
banks.
Moral Hazard for Newspapers
There has been
talk of bailing out newspapers for months.
But the newspapers have largely driven themselves into the ground with their
never-ending drive for higher profits, which led to a reduction in news bureaus,
investigation and real reporting, and an increase in reliance on government
and corporate press releases.
The newspapers made a speculative gamble that reducing real reporting and
replacing it with puff pieces would increase its profits, just as the giant
banks made speculative gambles on subprime mortgages, derivatives, and other
junk, and largely abandoned the boring, traditional business of depository banking.
Bailing out these newspapers would be a form of moral hazard equivalent to
bailing out the giant banks. Instead, we should let the bad gamblers lose, and
make room for companies that will
actually serve a public need.
Likewise, Dan Rather
points out that “roughly 80 percent” of the media is controlled by no more
than six, and possibly as few as four, corporations. As I
wrote in July:
This fact has been documented for years, as shown by the following must-see
charts prepared by:
This image gives a sense of the decline in diversity in media ownership
over the last couple of decades:
If traditional newspaper companies are bailed out, they will be encouraged
to continue their business-as-usual, and new, fresh media voices will face a
handicap to competition (just as the small banks are now unable to compete fairly
against the too big to fails).
We need more real reporting in this country, not less. Bailing out the traditional
media will create more consolidation, just as it has in the banking industry.
I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere,
all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to
put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people
shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding.
But as Dan Rather
pointed out in July, the quality of journalism in the mainstream media
has eroded considerably, and news has been corporatized, politicized, and
trivialized…
Indeed, people want change – that’s why we voted for Obama – but as Newseek’s
Evan Thomas admitted:
By definition, establishments believe in propping up the existing order.
Members of the ruling class have a vested interest in keeping things pretty
much the way they are. Safeguarding the status quo, protecting traditional
institutions, can be healthy and useful, stabilizing and reassuring….
“If you are of the establishment persuasion (and I am). . . .”
So traditional newspapers are also losing readers to the extent they are
writing puff pieces instead of writing the kinds of things people want to read:
hard-hitting stories about what is going on in the country and the world.
Finally, as I
wrote
in March, the whole Internet-versus-traditional-media discussion misses the
deeper truth:
The whole debate about blogs versus mainstream media is nonsense.
In fact, many of the world’s top PhD economics professors and financial
advisors have their own blogs…
The same is true in every other field: politics, science, history, international
relations, etc.
So what is “news”? What the largest newspapers choose to cover? Or what
various leading experts are saying – and oftentimes heatedly debating one
against the other?
The popularity of some reliable internet news sources are growing by leaps
and bounds. For example, web news sources which run hard-hitting investigative
news stories on the economy – and do not simply defer to Bernanke, Geithner,
Summers and other people “of the establishment persuasion” – are gaining more
and more readers.
It is not because it is some new, flashy media. It’s because people want
to know what is going on … and some of the best reporting can now be found on
the web.
"The "official" 9/11 narrative doesn't make sense"
Antiwar.com
The "official" 9/11 narrative doesn't make sense
On September 11, 2001, nineteen hijackers, wielding nothing more lethal than
box-cutters, commandeered four airliners, and turned them into lethal missiles,
three of which managed to hit their targets – the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon – while a fourth crashed in a field before it could strike its intended
target — the White House. One of the hijackers had been in the United States
since the mid-1990s, and the others, according to subsequent investigations,
entered, exited, and re-entered the United States
regularly
starting in 2000.
In the years and months prior to 9/11, the terrorists remained undetected:
there was not a hint, and certainly
no warning,
that we were about to experience the worst terrorist attack in our history.
In spite of all the billions spent on "anti-terrorism" programs during the Clinton
years, and the combined efforts of our intelligence community and those of our
allies’, Mohammed Atta and his cohorts managed to evade detection until the
day they emblazoned their vengeance across the sky and pulled off the biggest
terrorist attack in US history.
That, at least, is the official story. As to what the real story is
– well, we’re not allowed to ask.
President Obama’s "green czar," one
Van Jones,
was recently pressured into resigning. His crime? He had once signed a letter
originating with one of the "9/11 Truth" organizations calling for a new investigation
of the terrorist attacks. No, he hadn’t declared that 9/11 was an "inside job,"
as some of the more flamboyant "truthers" assert: indeed, he hadn’t challenged
any one specific aspect of the official story. All he had asked for was a new
investigation – and once this got out (thanks to Fox News nut-job
Glenn Beck), he was shown the door.
This is the way our society deals with uncomfortable questions about "official"
explanations for the inexplicable – by purging all dissenters, and even anybody
who asks a question without necessarily having a ready-made answer. To the stake
with them! Burn the heretics! Move along, nothing to see here – and don’t ask
questions unless you want to completely marginalize yourself, lose your job,
and be subjected to an intensive hate campaign.
We are asked to believe
that 19 men, armed with the most basic weapons, somehow managed to elude the
biggest, most expensively-accoutered intelligence apparatus in the world — and
the intelligence agencies of our allies, to boot. Utilizing nothing but box-cutters
and the knowledge gleaned from a few weeks at flight school, these supermen
somehow managed to steer those planes into two of the most visible potential
terrorist targets in the US, one of which had been successfully targeted by
terrorists before. They did this with no help from any foreign intelligence
agency, no nation-state in on the plot, and they did it for less than $100,000.
Really?
The more distance in time from the actual event, the odder such an assertion
seems. Eight years to the day, the official account of 9/11 seems more anemic
–and inadequate – than ever. Yet anyone who questions the official story – the
narrative of 19 Arab dudes going on what would seem to be a rather quixotic
jihad, haphazardly making their way through a strange foreign country on their
own, all the while readying themselves for The Day That Changed History – is
denounced as a "conspiracy theorist," a crackpot, and worse.
Of course, some of the people who challenge the official story are,
indeed,
crackpots: they think
some kind of "controlled demolition" took place inside the World Trade Center,
and that no plane hit the Pentagon.
This is very convenient for enforcers of the Official Truth: it’s easy to
write these people off as nutso, and even easier to tar everyone who questions
crucial aspects of the approved narrative with the same broad brush.
More critical minds, however, will not be deterred, and will certainly home
in on the many discrepancies and holes in the official version of events, as
well as the central implausibility of the whole affair, which is this: those
nineteen hijackers simply could not have pulled it off without outside assistance
of some sort, by which I mean to say help from a foreign power acting covertly
in this country. The sheer complexity of the operation would no doubt have been
enough to deter anyone, even al-Qaeda, from launching it in the first place:
the sheer odds against it succeeding were simply too great. There had
to have been some form of outside assistance – outside al-Qaeda, that is – for
the plot to have gone as far as it did right up until zero hour: and I believe
there was, because there is plenty of evidence that strongly suggests it.
A few weeks after 9/11, I was the first – and, as far as I know, only – writer
to draw attention to
the fact that, along with the thousand or so Muslims rounded up in the wake
of the attacks, as many as 200 Israelis were also taken into custody by then
Attorney General John Ashcroft and the feds. The subhead in the Washington
Post
story was quite explicit that these guys weren’t picked up for ordinary
visa violations: "Government calls Several
Cases ‘of Special Interest,’ Meaning Related to Post-Attacks Investigation."
What, I wondered, was the Israeli connection to 9/11? In any case, from that
point on it was a legitimate question to ask, and, indeed, unknown to me, the
news department over at Fox News was asking it — and, a few weeks after my column
appeared, they answered
it.
In an astonishing four-part series on Israeli spying in the US, top Fox News
reporter Carl Cameron detailed how Israeli agents on American soil had tracked
the hijackers, as they moved amongst us, and, in addition, had launched what
appeared to be a wide-ranging and quite aggressive intelligence-collection operation
directed at US government offices across the country. The allegations contained
in his report were denied – and the story (which soon disappeared from the Fox
News web site) was never followed up, but Cameron’s reportage haunts us today,
and mocks us from the archives where it has been gathering dust for eight years.
"Since September 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either
under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations," reported
Cameron:
"A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according
to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions
when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.
There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks,
but investigators suspect that the Israelis may have gathered intelligence about
the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said
there are ‘tie-ins.’ But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe
them, saying, ‘evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot
tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.’"
Over the
nextthreenights,
Cameron detailed the existence of an underground Israeli army in the US armed
with a dazzling array of hi-tech spying devices and techniques that enabled
them to penetrate our vital communications, including those utilized by law
enforcement. His reports also described the consequences for any law enforcement
officials who dared raise questions about this: their careers, Cameron told
us, would be effectively over.
Cameron’s reporting was viewed by millions. Of course, the Israelis and our
own government denied everything. Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli government,
scoffed: Israel, spying on the United States? Why, who ever heard of
such a thing?! The US government, for its part, disdained all such reports as
"an urban myth." The Israel lobby moved quickly to make sure the Cameron reports
were thrown down the Memory Hole, and Cameron was accused of –
you guessed it! – "anti-Semitism," on account of having spent time in the
Middle East in his youth.
Yet the story persisted. Die Zeit, the respected German weekly, ran
a piece entitled "Next
Door to Mohammed Atta," in which further evidence the Israelis had been
tracking the hijackers quite closely was cited as coming from French intelligence
sources. This was followed up by a story
in Salon – hardly a bastion of anti-Semitic agitation – which gave a long and
detailed account of the Israeli spying operation, as outlined by Cameron, and
concluded that it was in large part meant as a diversionary tactic. The same
author did a comprehensive follow-up in Counterpunch, after The Nation spiked it. Reputable newspapers
like the Scottish Sunday Heraldreported
the known facts.
Yet the 9/11 Commission did not so much as mention this aspect of the 9/11
story. Nor has Fox News ever followed up on Cameron’s reporting: they haven’t
disavowed it, either. They, along with the rest of the "news" media in this
country, simply
pretend it never happened. When Arianna Huffington purged me from blogging
on the Huffington Post, she cited my own reporting on this story as the reason:
"Oh, come on, Dhaaa-link! You know dat’s anti-Semitic!"
Really? Is Fox News anti-Semitic, too? Is Die Zeit? Salon?
Le Monde? How
about
The Forward?
Of course, Arianna is an airhead, but her instinct for self-preservation
at all costs – yes, even at the cost of the truth – is indicative of what’s
involved here. I was told, before I undertook to challenge the "official" 9/11
story, that I would pay for it by being cast out of the "mainstream" whilst
being mercilessly smeared. In any event, since I was never all that interested
in being considered "mainstream" – in part because I knew the whole concept
of "mainstream" was very over – and because the prospect of being viciously
attacked didn’t faze me in the least, I was
undeterred. And I remain
so to this day.
What I want to know is this: does Fox News stand by Carl Cameron’s reporting
on the question of Israeli foreknowledge of the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Yes
– or no? If so, then what is their loudest mouth – I refer, of course, to Glenn
Beck – doing smearing someone as a "Truther" who is asking the same sort of
questions asked by Fox News reporter Cameron? If Van Jones must go, because
he’s supposedly a "Truther," then Cameron must go, too.
No, I don’t expect an answer to my question any time soon – or, indeed, any
time at all. I just want my readers to contemplate the implications of that,
and what it says about the veracity of the "official" 9/11 narrative.
THE ROVING EYE Fifty questions on 9/11
By Pepe Escobar
It's September 11 all over again - eight years on. The George
W Bush administration is out. The "global war on terror" is still on, renamed
"overseas contingency operations" by the Barack Obama administration. Obama's
"new strategy" - a war escalation - is in play in AfPak. Osama bin Laden may
be dead or not. "Al-Qaeda" remains a catch-all ghost entity. September 11 -
the neo-cons' "new Pearl Harbor" - remains the darkest jigsaw puzzle of the
young 21st century.
It's useless to expect US corporate media and the ruling elites' political
operatives to call for a true, in-depth investigation into the attacks on the
US on September 11, 2001. Whitewash has been the norm. But even establishment
highlight Dr Zbig "Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski, a former national security
advisor, has admitted to the US Senate that the post-9/11 "war on terror" is
a "mythical historical narrative".
The following questions, some multi-part - and most totally ignored by the
9/11 Commission - are just the tip of the immense 9/11 iceberg. A hat tip goes
to the indefatigable work of 911truth.org; whatreallyhappened.com; architects
and engineers for 9/11 truth; the Italian documentary Zero: an
investigation into 9/11; and Asia
Times Online readers' e-mails.
None of these questions has been convincingly answered - according to the
official narrative. It's up to US civil society to keep up the pressure. Eight
years after the fact, one fundamental conclusion is imperative. The official
narrative edifice of 9/11 is simply not acceptable.
Fifty questions
1) How come dead or not dead Osama bin Laden has not been formally indicted
by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as responsible for 9/11? Is it
because the US government - as acknowledged by the FBI itself - has not produced
a single conclusive piece of evidence?
2) How could all the alleged 19 razor-blade box cutter-equipped Muslim perpetrators
have been identified in less than 72 hours - without even a crime scene investigation?
3) How come none of the 19's names appeared on the passenger lists released
the same day by both United Airlines and American Airlines?
4) How come eight names on the "original" FBI list happened to be found alive
and living in different countries?
5) Why would pious jihadi Mohammed Atta leave a how-to-fly video manual,
a uniform and his last will inside his bag knowing he was on a suicide mission?
6) Why did Mohammed Atta study flight simulation at Opa Locka, a hub of no
less than six US Navy training bases?
7) How could Mohammed Atta's passport have been magically found buried among
the Word Trade Center (WTC)'s debris when not a single flight recorder was found?
8) Who is in the possession of the "disappeared" eight indestructible black
boxes on those four flights?
9) Considering multiple international red alerts about a possible terrorist
attack inside the US - including former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's
infamous August 6, 2001, memo - how come four hijacked planes deviating from
their computerized flight paths and disappearing from radar are allowed to fly
around US airspace for more than an hour and a half - not to mention disabling
all the elaborate Pentagon's defense systems in the process?
10) Why the secretary of the US Air Force James Roche did not try to intercept
both planes hitting the WTC (only seven minutes away from McGuire Air Force
Base in New Jersey) as well as the Pentagon (only 10 minutes away from McGuire)?
Roche had no less than 75 minutes to respond to the plane hitting the Pentagon.
11) Why did George W Bush continue to recite "My Pet Goat" in his Florida school
and was not instantly absconded by the secret service?
12) How could Bush have seen the first plane crashing on WTC live - as he
admitted? Did he have previous knowledge - or is he psychic?
13) Bush said that he and Andrew Card initially thought the first hit on
the WTC was an accident with a small plane. How is that possible when the FAA
as well as NORAD already knew this was about a hijacked plane?
14) What are the odds of transponders in four different planes be turned
off almost simultaneously, in the same geographical area, very close to the
nation's seat of power in Washington, and no one scrambles to contact the Pentagon
or the media?
15) Could defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld explain why initial media reports
said that there were no fighter jets available at Andrews Air Force Base and
then change the reports that there were, but not on high alert?
16) Why was the DC Air National Guard in Washington AWOL on 9/11?
17) Why did combat jet fighters of the 305th Air Wing, McGuire Air Force
Base in New Jersey not intercept the second hijacked plane hitting the WTC,
when they could have done it within seven minutes?
18) Why did none of the combat jet fighters of the 459th Aircraft Squadron
at Andrews Air Force Base intercept the plane that hit the Pentagon, only 16
kilometers away? And since we're at it, why the Pentagon did not release the
full video of the hit?
19) A number of very experienced airline pilots - including US ally Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak, a former fighter jet pilot - revealed that, well, only
crack pilots could have performed such complex maneuvers on the hijacked jets,
while others insisted they could only have been accomplished by remote control.
Is it remotely believable that the hijackers were up to the task?
20) How come a substantial number of witnesses did swear seeing and hearing
multiple explosions in both towers of the WTC?
21) How come a substantial number of reputed architects and engineers are
adamant that the official narrative simply does not explain the largest structural
collapse in recorded history (the Twin Towers) as well as the collapse of WTC
building 7, which was not even hit by a jet?
22) According to Frank de Martini, WTC's construction manager, "We designed
the building to resist the impact of one or more jetliners." The second plane
nearly missed tower 1; most of the fuel burned in an explosion outside the tower.
Yet this tower collapsed first, long before tower 2 that was "perforated" by
the first hit. Jet fuel burned up fast - and by far did not reach the 2000-degree
heat necessary to hurt the six tubular steel columns in the center of the tower
- designed specifically to keep the towers from collapsing even if hit by a
Boeing 707. A Boeing 707 used to carry more fuel than the Boeing 757 and Boeing
767 that actually hit the towers.
23) Why did Mayor Rudolph Giuliani instantly authorized the shipment of WTC
rubble to China and India for recycling?
24) Why was metallic debris found no less than 13 kilometers from the crash
site of the plane that went down in Pennsylvania? Was the plane in fact shot
down - under vice president Dick Cheney's orders?
25) The Pipelineistan question. What did US ambassador Wendy Chamberlain
talk about over the phone on October 10, 2001, with the oil minister of Pakistan?
Was it to tell him that the 1990s-planned Unocal gas pipeline project, TAP (Turkmenistan/Afghanistan/
Pakistan), abandoned because of Taliban demands on transit fees, was now back
in business? (Two months later, an agreement to build the pipeline was signed
between the leaders of the three countries).
26) What is former Unocal lobbyist and former Bush pet Afghan Zalmay Khalilzad
up to in Afghanistan?
27) How come former Pakistani foreign minister Niaz Niak said in mid-July
2001 that the US had already decided to strike against Osama bin Laden and the
Taliban by October? The topic was discussed secretly at the July Group of Eight
summit in Genoa, Italy, according to Pakistani diplomats.
28) How come US ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine told FBI agent John O'Neill
in July 2001 to stop investigating al-Qaeda's financial operations - with O'Neill
instantly moved to a security job at the WTC, where he died on 9/11?
29) Considering the very intimate relationship between the Taliban and Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the ISI and the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), is Bin Laden alive, dead or still a valuable asset of the ISI,
the CIA or both?
30) Was Bin Laden admitted at the American hospital in Dubai in the United
Arab Emirates on July 4, 2001, after flying from Quetta, Pakistan, and staying
for treatment until July 11?
31) Did the Bin Laden group build the caves of Tora Bora in close cooperation
with the CIA during the 1980s' anti-Soviet jihad?
32) How come General Tommy Franks knew for sure that Bin Laden was hiding
in Tora Bora in late November 2001?
33) Why did president Bill Clinton abort a hit on Bin Laden in October 1999?
Why did then-Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf abort a covert ops in the
same date? And why did Musharraf do the same thing again in August 2001?
34) Why did George W Bush dissolve the Bin Laden Task Force nine months before
9/11?
35) How come the (fake) Bin Laden home video - in which he "confesses" to
being the perpetrator of 9/11 - released by the US on December 13, 2001, was
found only two weeks after it was produced (on November 9); was it really found
in Jalalabad (considering Northern Alliance and US troops had not even arrived
there at the time); by whom; and how come the Pentagon was forced to release
a new translation after the first (botched) one?
36) Why was ISI chief Lieutenant General Mahmud Ahmad abruptly "retired"
on October 8, 2001, the day the US started bombing Afghanistan?
37) What was Ahmad up to in Washington exactly on the week of 9/11 (he arrived
on September 4)? On the morning of 9/11, Ahmad was having breakfast on Capitol
Hill with Bob Graham and Porter Goss, both later part of the 9/11 Commission,
which simply refused to investigate two of its members. Ahmad had breakfast
with Richard Armitage of the State Department on September 12 and 13 (when Pakistan
negotiated its "cooperation" with the "war on terror") and met all the CIA and
Pentagon top brass. On September 13, Musharraf announced he would send Ahmad
to Afghanistan to demand to the Taliban the extradition of Bin Laden.
38) Who inside the ISI transferred US$100,000 to Mohammed Atta in the summer
of 2001 - under orders of Ahmad himself, as Indian intelligence insists? Was
it really ISI asset Omar Sheikh, Bin Laden's information technology specialist
who later organized the slaying of American journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi?
So was the ISI directly linked to 9/11?
39) Did the FBI investigate the two shady characters who met Mohammed Atta
and Marwan al-Shehhi in Harry's Bar at the Helmsley Hotel in New York City on
September 8, 2001?
40) What did director of Asian affairs at the State Department Christina
Rocca and the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef discuss in their
meeting in Islamabad in August 2001?
41) Did Washington know in advance that an "al-Qaeda" connection would kill
Afghan nationalist commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, aka "The Lion of the Panjshir",
only two days before 9/11? Massoud was fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda - helped
by Russia and Iran. According to the Northern Alliance, Massoud was killed by
an ISI-Taliban-al Qaeda axis. If still alive, he would never have allowed the
US to rig a loya jirga (grand council) in Afghanistan and install a puppet,
former CIA asset Hamid Karzai, as leader of the country.
42) Why did it take no less than four months before the name of Ramzi Binalshibh
surfaced in the 9/11 context, considering the Yemeni was a roommate of Mohammed
Atta in his apartment cell in Hamburg?
43) Is pathetic shoe-bomber Richard Reid an ISI asset?
44) Did then-Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russian intelligence tell
the CIA in 2001 that 25 terrorist pilots had been training for suicide missions?
45) When did the head of German intelligence, August Hanning, tell the CIA
that terrorists were "planning to hijack commercial aircraft?"
46) When did Egyptian President Mubarak tell the CIA about an attack on the
US with an "airplane stuffed with explosives?"
47) When did Israel's Mossad director Efraim Halevy tell the CIA about a
possible attack on the US by "200 terrorists?"
48) Were the Taliban aware of the warning by a Bush administration official
as early as February 2001 - "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold,
or we bury you under a carpet of bombs?"
49) Has Northrop-Grumman used Global Hawk technology - which allows to remotely
control unmanned planes - in the war in Afghanistan since October 2001? Did
it install Global Hawk in a commercial plane? Is Global Hawk available at all
for commercial planes?
50) Would Cheney stand up and volunteer the detailed timeline of what he
was really up to during the whole day on 9/11?
Military contracting procedures means that work will stay with domestic players.
So one could take the cynical view that the US has been willing to cede every
kind of manufacturing we could, and defense contracting is by nature off that
list.
But does this split have to do with bona fide security concerns? Yes and
no. Why have we let chip manufacture go overseas?
We are outsourcing more of our chip manufacturing to China (Taiwan is the biggest
single foreign fabricator, which may explain China's keen interest in reasserting
control). Trade in
advanced technology products is heavily weighed in
favor of China.
Taplin gives a dystopian view:
We have so hollowed out our industrial plant that the only thing we are
now producing is weapons of war. The great British Historian Arnold Toynbee’s
theory about the decline of the Roman Empire has lessons for our current
age.
The economy of the Empire was basically a Raubwirtschaft or
plunder economy based on looting existing
resources rather than producing anything new. The Empire
relied on booty from conquered territories (this source of revenue ending,
of course, with the end of Roman territorial expansion) or on a pattern
of tax collection that drove small-scale farmers into destitution (and
onto a dole that required even more exactions upon those who could not
escape taxation), or into dependency upon a landed élite exempt from
taxation. With the cessation of tribute from conquered territories,
the full cost of their military machine had to be borne by the citizenry.
This I know. We cannot continue on this course of decline.
Yves here. I have to interject. "Cannot continue?" I see tremendous inertia as far as the path we are on is concerned. We not
only have bread and circuses, have version 2.0, with offerings targeted by income
level and age group. Back to Taplin:
While many of the elite escape taxation with their brilliant “tax shelter”
accountants, the middle class (Rome’s “small scale farmers”) are being asked
to shoulder the economic burden of empire.
Shortly after the election President Obama
made it clear that the chokehold of the Military Industrial Complex over
our economy
was not going to change on his watch –...After
all, with 4% of the world’s people why shouldn’t we spend 45% of the world’s
military spending?
I have only one question–Where is the national politician with the courage
to say we no longer have to act as the unpaid policeman of the world?
My simplistic view is quite different. Our economic
power is past its sell-by date. US leadership is deeply committed to maintaining
whatever hold on global authority that we can. Nukes and a big navy, which makes
us the only country that can land a large army, are very helpful in that regard.
How do you think our little chats with China over what we owe them would go
if were weren't the world's sole superpower?
If we don't manage
our way out of our debt mess, we may wind up in the long run having to sell
our "precious foreign real estate." Maybe it's time for someone to tell the
DoD that failure to rein in Wall Street will create a security risk.
>Ina Pickle :
Yves, that is a revolutionary idea. . . perhaps literally. Why not pit
the two biggest lobbying machines against each other? Hmmm . . . . .
I've been thinking that I need to reread Gibbons. Seems timely.
Human Head:
"I have only one question–Where is the national politician with the courage
to say we no longer have to act as the unpaid policeman of the world?"
He's in the Senate. Goes by the name of Ron Paul. You know, the one that
was derided as crazy, in favor of the Serious and Respectable Candidates
(read: owned) in the last election.
cindy:
China would be keen to regain Taiwan even if it were just a pile of rocks
a la Tibet.
As for national security, one has to ask whether maintaining "all spectrum"
hegemony really is in the best interest of the American people. Soviet Union
went down this way, and we all know how that ended.
"The power of a nation ultimately derives from its economic production"
, Chapter 1, The Art of War
It's been a good week. Robert McNamara's dead and my book, Armed Madhouse,
was released in translation in Vietnam.
I don't blame McNamara for losing the war in
Vietnam. After all, the good guys won. I do, however, blame him for losing World
War II.
In 1995, in Chicago, veterans of Silver Post No. 282 celebrated the fiftieth
anniversary of their victory over Japan, marching around a catering hall wearing
their old service caps, pins, ribbons and medals. My father sat at his table,
silent. He did not wear his medals.
He had given them to me thirty years earlier. I can figure it exactly: March
8, 1965. That day, like every other, we walked to the newsstand near the dime
store to get the LA Times. He was a Times man. Never read the Examiner.
He looked at the headline: U.S. Marines had landed on the beach at Danang,
Vietnam.
Vietnamese gun boats had attacked American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. The
Times said so. President Johnson said so. His Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara said so.
But on the Oval Office tapes, Johnson said, "Hell, those damn stupid [US]
sailors were just shooting at flying fish." McNamara corrected him later. They
were shooting at their own "sonar shadow." But that, of course, wouldn't be
mentioned in the Times.
My dad didn't need LBJ's tape to know: they lied.
As a kid, I was fascinated by my dad’s medals. One, embossed with an eagle
and soldiers under a palm tree, said “Asiatic Pacific Campaign.” It had three
bronze stars and an arrowhead.
My father always found flag-wavers a bit suspect.
But he was a patriot, nurturing this deep and intelligent patriotism. To him,
America stood for Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Four Freedoms.
My father’s army had liberated Hitler’s concentration camps and later protected
Martin Luther King’s marchers on the road to Birmingham. His America put its
strong arm around the world’s shoulder as protector. On the back of the medal,
it read “Freedom from Want and Fear.”
His victory over Japan was a victory of principles over imperial power, of
freedom over tyranny, of right over Japan’s raw military might. A song he taught
me from the early days of the war, when Japan had the guns and we had only ideals,
went,
We have no bombers to attack with . . .
But Eagles, American Eagles,
fight for the rights we adore!
“That’s it,” he said that day in 1965, and folded the newspaper.
The politicians had ordered his army, with its fierce postwar industrial
killing machines, to set upon Asia’s poor. Too well read in history and too
experienced in battle, he knew what was coming. He could see right then what
it would take other Americans ten years of that war in Vietnam to see: American
bombers dropping napalm on straw huts, burning the same villages Hirohito’s
invaders had burned twenty years earlier.
Johnson and McNamara had taken away his victory over Japan.
They stole his victory over tyranny. When we returned home, he dropped his
medals into my twelve-year-old hands to play with and to lose among my toys.
A few years ago, my wife Linda and I went to Vietnam to help out rural credit
unions lending a few dollars to farmers so they could buy pigs and chickens.
On March 8, 1995, while in Danang, I walked up a long stone stairway from
the beach to a shrine where Vietnamese honor their parents and ancestors.
Halfway up, a man about my age had stopped to rest, exhausted from his difficult,
hot climb on one leg and crutches. I sat next to him, but he turned his head
away, ashamed of his ragged clothes, parts of an old, dirty uniform.
The two of us watched the fishermen at work on the boats below. I put one
of my father’s medals down next to him. I don’t know what he thought I was doing.
I don’t know myself.
In ’45, on the battleship Missouri, Douglas MacArthur accepted the
surrender of Imperial Japan. I never thought much of General MacArthur, but
he said something that stuck with me. “It is for us, both victors and vanquished,
to rise to that higher dignity which alone benefits the sacred purposes we are
about to serve.”
Excerpted from "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" (Penguin 2003).
One issue I have with the U.S. media is its complete inability to reflect
on what the U.S. is actually doing when they report on foreign reactions.
Today the Washington Post's Craig Whitlock is outraged that Spanish prosecutors
and judges care about international crimes against humanity. He does not spend
a second on thinking about how much of that may be really justified when one
takes into account the openly admitted misdeeds of the U.S.
MADRID -- Spanish judges are boldly declaring their authority to prosecute
high-ranking government officials in the United States, China and Israel,
among other places, delighting human rights activists but enraging officials
in the countries they target and triggering a political backlash in a nation
uncomfortable acting as the world's conscience.
Reality version:
WASHINGTON D.C. -- American and Israeli officials are boldly declaring
their authority to kill high-ranking government officials in Iraq, Afghanistan
and Syria, among other places, delighting Zionists activists but enraging
officials in the countries they target and triggering a political backlash
in nations comfortable acting as the world's conscience.
WaPo:
Judges at Spain's National Court, acting on complaints filed by human
rights groups, are pursuing 16 international investigations into suspected
cases of torture, genocide and crimes against humanity, according to prosecutors.
Among them are two probes of Bush administration officials for allegedly
approving the use of torture on terrorism suspects, including prisoners
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
My version reads:
Officials at the U.S. National Security Council, acting on complaints
filed by Zionist groups, are pursuing international crimes by pursuing torture,
genocide and crimes against humanity, according to U.S. officials. Among
them are Bush administration officials who approved the use of torture on
terrorism suspects, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
And so on.
The U.S. is pressing Spain to change its laws so that international U.S.
crimes, even when effecting Spanish citizens, can no longer be prosecuted. At
the same time the U.S. claims it has the right to snatch or kill anyone, anywhere,
anytime for whatever reason.
Not one bit of that comparison makes it into the piece. "We're an
empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality
..."
Selected Comments
What you might not realize (or perhaps you do) that the journalist that cover
the US Empire are themselves part of it.
The real players got their jobs BECAUSE of their ability to remain blind
to this bullshit. Everyone who has an ounce of power or say in how media does
its job is working achieve the same crap.
None of the mainstream media outlets are worth a shit! They keep the people
dumb and sedated and bickering amongst themselves rather than focused on the
limited number of wealthy, powerful assholes that keep on screwing us, generation
after generation.
I think the irony of this is that Americans are so used to being screwed
that if all the MSM were to focus the people's attention upon this screwing,
the MSM would be treated as the cause, rather than just the messenger.
Personally I think Americans like being lied to. We still like o' dickin'
the inter Clinton... the men want women with fake breast wearing make-up...
who knows what women want :)
But it seems Americans prefer to sleep with ugly falsehoods dressed-up purty...
just like in the movies.
Posted by: DavidS | May 24, 2009
===
This is the face of corruption.
"Corruption" is an extremely vague word, and purposefully. It does not connote
an intent; in truth, it is exactly the opposite: corruption is an affliction
of the essence, the soul, the core, or the genes. Corruption is from birth,
and unquestionably so -- but ever undetectable from the inside.
This generation of the U.S. is corrupt -- from head to tail, from crown to
foot. All systems are corrupt to some extent or another, but historically we
see that some eras are characterized by it, marked so definitively that generations
after know it first, and foremost, as a time of only misdeeds, perjury, and
cynicism.
The U.S. is corrupt, and its chief enabler is the U.S. media; if a nation
is a body, then the media is its voice. The U.S. media has become a shrieking
middle-aged woman, demanding allowances for the evils of her thuggish boys,
hulking monstrosities every one. As they stone dogs, kick children, and put
fertile grounds to the torch, she stands in her doorway with her midwife, both
clamoring and yammering before the moronic sheriffs and their deputies, all
too stupid to see the toothless hag for what she is, even as her cunt squeezes
out one after another of wire-haired, blunt-eyed imbeciles, each one determined
to inherit the globe
"In 1877, Lord Salisbury, commenting on Great Britain's policy on the Eastern
Question, noted that 'the commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass
of dead policies.'
"Salisbury was bemoaning the fact that many influential
members of the British ruling class could not recognize that history had moved
on; they continued to cling to policies and institutions that were relics of
another era."
"Relics of another era" — thus did Stephen Meyer, in Parameters in 2003,
begin his essay "Carcass of Dead Policies: The Irrelevance of NATO."
NATO has been irrelevant for two decades, since its raison d'etre — to keep
the Red Army from driving to the Rhine — disappeared. Yet Obama is headed to
Brussels to celebrate France's return and the 60th birthday of the alliance.
But why is NATO still soldiering on?
In 1989, the Wall fell. Germany was reunited. The Captive Nations cast off
communism. The Red Army went home. The USSR broke apart into 15 nations. But,
having triumphed in the Cold War, it seems the United States could not bear
giving up its role as Defender of the West, could not accept that the curtain
had fallen and the play was closing after a 40-year run.
So, what did we do? In a spirit of "triumphalism," NATO "nearly doubled its
size and rolled itself right up to Russia's door," writes Richard Betts in The
National Interest.
Breaking our word to Mikhail Gorbachev, we invited into NATO six former member
states of the Warsaw Pact and three former republics of the Soviet Union. George
W. Bush was disconsolate he could not bring in Georgia and Ukraine.
Why did we expand NATO to within a few miles of St. Petersburg when NATO
is not a social club but a military alliance? At its heart is Article V, a declaration
that an armed attack on any one member is an attack on all.
America is now honor-bound to go to war against a nuclear-armed Russia for
Estonia, which was part of the Russian Empire under the czars.
After the Russia-Georgia clash last August, Bush declared, "It's important
for the people of Lithuania to know that when the United States makes a commitment
— we mean it."
But "mean" what? That a Russian move on Vilnius will be met by U.S. strikes
on Mother Russia? Are we insane?
Let us thank Divine Providence Russia has not tested the pledge.
For can anyone believe that, to keep Moscow from re-establishing its hegemony
over a tiny Baltic republic, we would sink Russian ships, blockade Russian ports,
bomb Russian airfields, attack Russian troop concentrations? That would risk
having some Russian general respond with atomic weapons on U.S. air, sea and
ground forces.
Great powers do not go to war against other great powers unless vital interests
are imperiled. Throughout the Cold War, that was true of both America and Russia.
Though he had an atomic monopoly, Harry Truman did not use force to break
the Berlin blockade. Nor did Ike intervene to save the Hungarians, whose 1956
revolution Moscow drowned in blood.
John F. Kennedy did not use force to stop the building of the Berlin Wall.
Lyndon Johnson fired not a shot to halt the crushing of Prague Spring by Soviet
tanks. When Solidarity was snuffed out on Moscow's orders in 1981, Ronald Reagan
would not even put the Polish regime in default.
In August 1991, George Bush I, in Kiev, poured ice water on Ukraine's dream
of independence: "Americans will not support those who seek independence in
order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid
those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred."
Many Americans were outraged. But outrage does not translate into an endorsement
of Bush's 43's plan to bring Ukraine into NATO and risk war with Russia over
the Crimea.
Bush 43 bellowed at Moscow last summer to keep hands off the Baltic states.
But his father barely protested when Gorbachev sent special forces into all
three in 1991.
Bush I's secretary of state, Jim Baker, said it was U.S. policy not to see
Yugoslavia break up. Bush 43 was handing out NATO war guarantees to the breakaway
republics.
"Washington ... succumbed to victory disease and kept kicking Russia while
it was down," writes Betts. "Two decades of humiliation were a potent incentive
for Russia to push back. Indeed this is why many realists opposed NATO expansion
in the first place."
Few Americans under 30 recall the Cold War. Yet can anyone name a single
tripwire for war put down in the time of Dean Acheson or John Foster Dulles
that we have pulled up?
Dwight Eisenhower, writes Richard Reeves, in his first meeting with the new
president-elect, told JFK, "'America is carrying far more than her share of
the free world defense.' It was time for the other nations of NATO to take on
more of the cost of their own defense."
Half a century later, we are still stuck "to the carcass of dead policies."
Patrick Buchanan is the author of the new book "Churchill, Hitler and 'The
Unnecessary War." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features
by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate
web page at www.creators.com.
"The New American Militarism-How Americans Are Seduced by War" is an analysis
of the subject from multiple viewpoints. Andrew Bacevich examines American
militarism from the point of: politicians, the military, evangelical Christians,
and society in general.
In the Preface the author is quite candid and humble about himself, his
idealogy, and some of the experiences that helped form his positions.
"Some will misread this as cynicism. It is instead the absence of illusion."
He doesn't attempt to lay blame.
The chapter on the neoconservative idealogy (Left,Right,Left)was very
good. Some of the leaders were "devout Wilsonians, devoted to the proposition
that American values are by definition universal values." That's an accurate
assessment of exporting democracy.
"The conception of politics to which neoconservatives paid allegiance owed
more to the ethos of the Left than the orthodoxes of the Right.On the Right
they hoped to find the oppurtunity to create the alternative perception
of reality necessary for fulfilling their radical aspirations." One of those
aspirations was the global empire that we have now.
In analyzing the view of evangelical Christians on militarism he made
this truthful observation on page 124-
"The relationship between Christianity and war has been a tangled one. Despite
Christ's admonition to love one's neighbor and to turn the other cheek,
Christians historically have slaughtered their fellow men, to include their
fellow Christians, in breathtakingly large numbers."
Some Christian advocate war more than others.
Some more subject matter that I found revelatory were:
*The author compares current and past presidents foreign policy to that
of Woodrow Wilson.
*The analysis of the Weinberger and Powell Doctrines regarding pre-conditions
for engagement.
*Where the idea for prosecuting two wars concurrently originated.
*The quote from a Pentagon General assessing Rumsfeld as someone who has
"done more damage to the country than we will recover from in 50 years"
was sobering.
*The "priesthood of strategists". Who they are and how deeply they have
affected military strategy .
*A comparison of former presidents and how they viewed and sometimes utilized
the military.
Mr. Bacevich offers some sensible solutions to the current problems of
American militarism, one being to utilize the National Guard more at home
for Homeland Security activities. Border Patrol would make sense.
"American policymakers should employ force only with reluctance and after
the most careful deliberation....and it should do so with one eye cocked
on the home front, wary of claims of military necessity being used to compromise
our civil liberties."
My interest in Andrew Bacevich's books was kindled by watching an appearance
he made on Bill Moyer's program to promote "The Limits of Power." This book
is one of the best I have read in some time.I'd rate it highly and in the
league of Chalmers Johnson's books.
The New American Militarism- insightful and balanced,
December 20, 2007
Andrew J. Bacevich's New American Militarism is an informative, insightful,
methodical analysis of key influences that have created American militarism,
of how it came to be as it is. It is careful delineation of the parts influencing
how G. W. Bush and the current administration arrived at their current policy,
and why they regard the use of force and the deployment of American military
forces throughout the world as paramount components of our foreign policy,
despite warnings to the contrary from the nation's Founders. From his description
of Woodrow Wilson's original interventionist intent (a moral vision shared
with both Carter and Reagan, manifesting itself in vastly different ways
in their respective presidencies, and one that GW Bush would adopt after
9/11), to the impact on the public's psyche of the mass media and Hollywood,
the long term investment in particular world views of the evangelical right,
neo-cons and the officers' corps under decades of Cold War influence--he
meticulously traces how the parts fit together, and who played what role.
This writer found his narration of the on-going influence of Albert Wohlstetter,
the RAND Corporation and Robert McNamara, and their subsequent impact on
Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Bush (II) to be particularly interesting. Simultaneously
informative and frustrating was his description of evangelicals; it brought
home the point that a thorough reading of Mark Twain's War Prayer would
probably leave little impression on many of them.
His tying together of such seemingly disparate leaders as Carter and Hoover,
Reagan and Roosevelt, Wilson and Bush, show recurring trends in how the
government approaches the leviathan that is our armed forces. Bacevich describes
a juggernaut used for global power projection, where all the principal policy
players (presidents and presidential candidates, Congress, etc.) know that
bigger is essential--as Carter discovered to his electoral dismay after
delivering his Crisis of Conscience speech. (pgs. 100-102) Without falling
into diatribe or invective against any of those he describes, it is quite
clear who stands out as Bacevich's exemplars and who comes up short. We
see the myriad influences that have lead to President Bush's Orwellian injunction
that this country must go on the offense and stay on the offense, and simultaneously
understand that is not a new concept with GW, as we see from C. Wright Mills'
1956 commentary on the subject, that "the only accepted `plan' for peace
is the loaded pistol."
The author's description of the convictions of second generation neo-cons
(heirs to the ideological likes of Podhoretz and Kagan), is instructive
in that it is a mirror reflection of the current administration's SOP (American
global dominion is benign and other nations necessarily see it as such,
failure on the part of the US to sustain its imperium would inevitable result
in global disorder, nothing works like force, commitment to sustaining and
enhancing American military supremacy is essential and, a political realism
is viewed with hostility, whether manifesting itself as a deficit of ideals
or an excess of caution).
Bacevich sees that culpability for the current situation is cumulative,
and while one or another of the players may share more responsibility for
our current predicament, laying blame accomplishes nothing and does not
address the issues and challenges our militarism confronts us with. The
author makes it clear that (as Madison puts it) "...No nation could preserve
its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." With these points in mind,
Bacevich offers in his final chapter, Common Defense, a plan of action--ten
fundamental principles to abate present militaristic tendencies (heed the
intentions of the Founders, revitalize the concept of separation of powers,
view force as a last resort, enhance US strategic self-sufficiency, organize
US forces explicitly for national defense, devise an appropriate gauge for
determining the level of US defense spending, enhance alternative instruments
of statecraft, revive the moribund concept of the citizen-soldier, re-examine
the role of the National Guard and reserve components, and reconcile the
American military profession to American society). (pgs. 208-221) I would
include a final essential point in Bacevich's ten principles to avert expanding
militarism--unceasing engagement, for it is only through consistent contact
that we can hope to engage both our allies and foes. The indelible conclusion
one draws from New American Militarism is that there are a multitude of
issues that must be simultaneously addressed in order to curtain our reliance
on overt militarism as a tool of foreign policy, but Bacevich also makes
it clear that such a process of redress is possible. An excellent read for
anyone in the armed forces, who has a family member in the military, or
who has an interest in the symbiotic relationship between American society
and its military.
Interesting critique of American militarism, March 3, 2007
Andrew Bacevich, a military veteran and self-described conservative,
has written a hard-hitting, though-provoking work. His very first paragraph
lays out what is at stake in this book (p. ix): "This is a book about the
new American militarism--the misleading and dangerous conceptions of war,
soldiers, and military institutions that have come to pervade the American
consciousness and that have perverted present-day U. S. national security
policy." He goes on, in the introductory comments, to note that contemporary
leaders often overreach, being caught in their own hubris. He notes (p.
xii): "What is most striking about the most powerful man in the world [the
President of the United States] is not the power that he wields. It is how
constrained he and his lieutenants are by forces that lie beyond their grasp
and perhaps their understanding."
He argues that Vietnam's legacy has included the empowering of neoconservatives,
the religious right, and others in coming to believe that the United States
ought to project military might to advance its interests. He observes how
Ronald Regan's presidency exemplified this bent. This has led to a naïve
view as to what military power can do. In his view, this faith has led the
United States to move in a direction contrary to some of the most important
figures in American history, such as George Washington.
He concludes by quoting President Washington, as he left public life.
Washington is quoted as saying that Americans ought to be leery of (p. 224):
". . .those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government,
are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly
hostile to republican liberty." Nothing need be added to Washington's words
to highlight what Bacevich believes is "at stake."
His suggestions as to how the United States might address this may not
be convincing to readers, but he does engage those readers in an important
dialogue. For that alone, this book is to be accorded much appreciation.
In his book The New American Militarism (2005), Andrew Bacevich desacralizes
our idolatrous infatuation with military might, but in a way that avoids
the partisan cant of both the left and the right that belies so much discourse
today. Bacevich's personal experiences and professional expertise lend his
book an air of authenticity that I found compelling. A veteran of Vietnam
and subsequently a career officer, a graduate of West Point and later Princeton
where he earned a PhD in history, director of Boston University's Center
for International Relations, he describes himself as a cultural conservative
who views mainstream liberalism with skepticism, but who also is a person
whose "disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied
in the present Bush administration and its groupies, is just about absolute."
Finally, he identifies himself as a "conservative Catholic." Idolizing militarism,
Bacevich insists, is far more complex, broader and deeper than scape-goating
either political party, accusing people of malicious intent or dishonorable
motives, demonizing ideological fanatics as conspirators, or replacing a
given administration. Not merely the state or the government, but society
at large, is enthralled with all things military.
Our military idolatry, Bacevich believes, is now so comprehensive and
beguiling that it "pervades our national consciousness and perverts our
national policies." We have normalized war, romanticized military life that
formally was deemed degrading and inhuman, measured our national greatness
in terms of military superiority, and harbor naive, unlimited expectations
about how waging war, long considered a tragic last resort that signaled
failure, can further our national self-interests. Utilizing a "military
metaphysic" to justify our misguided ambitions to recreate the world in
our own image, with ideals that we imagine are universal, has taken about
thirty years to emerge in its present form. It is this marriage between
utopians ends and military means that Bacevich wants to annul.
How have we come to idolize military might with such uncritical devotion?
He likens it to pollution: "the perhaps unintended, but foreseeable by-product
of prior choices and decisions made without taking fully into account the
full range of costs likely to be incurred" (p. 206). In successive chapters
he analyzes six elements of this toxic condition that combined in an incremental
and cumulative fashion.
After the humiliation of Vietnam, an "unmitigated disaster" in his view,
the military set about to rehabilitate and reinvent itself, both in image
and substance. With the All Volunteer Force, we moved from a military comprised
of citizen-soldiers that were broadly representative of all society to a
professional warrior caste that by design isolated itself from broader society
and that by default employed a disproportionate percentage of enlistees
from the lowest socio-economic class. War-making was thus done for us, by
a few of us, not by all of us. Second, the rise of the neo-conservative
movement embraced American Exceptionalism as our national end and superior
coercive force as the means to franchise it around the world. Myth-making
about warfare sentimentalized, sanitized and fictionalized war. The film
Top Gun is only one example of "a glittering new image of warfare." Fourth,
without the wholehearted complicity of conservative evangelicalism, militarism
would have been "inconceivable," a tragic irony when you consider that the
most "Christian" nation on earth did far less to question this trend than
many ostensibly "secular" nations. Fifth, during the years of nuclear proliferation
and the fears of mutually assured destruction, a "priesthood" of elite defense
analysts pushed for what became known as the Revolution in Military Affairs
(RMA). RMA pushed the idea of "limited" and more humane war using game theory
models and technological advances with euphemisms like "clean" and "smart"
bombs. But here too our "exuberance created expectations that became increasingly
uncoupled from reality," as the current Iraq debacle demonstrates. Finally,
despite knowing full well that dependence upon Arab oil made us vulnerable
to the geo-political maelstroms of that region, we have continued to treat
the Persian Gulf as a cheap gas station. How to insure our Arab oil supply,
protect Saudi Arabia, and serve as Israel's most important protector has
always constituted a squaring of the circle. Sordid and expedient self interest,
our "pursuit of happiness ever more expansively defined," was only later
joined by more lofty rhetoric about exporting universal ideals like democracy
and free markets, or, rather, the latter have only been a (misguided) means
to secure the former.
Bacevich opens and closes with quotes from our Founding Fathers. In 1795,
James Madison warned that "of all the enemies of public liberty, war is
perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ
of every other." Similarly, late in his life George Washington warned the
country of "those overgrown military establishments which, under any form
of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded
as particularly hotile to republican liberty."
Author Andrew Bacevich has superb credentials on military, diplomatic,
and historical issues. A Vietnam Veteran, 25+ year career in the Army and
now professor of International Relations, Bacevich is one of the few that
has the experience *and* knowledge to dissect what has been occurring in
American socio-political culture and society for the last several decades.
Bacevich notes the current focus on the military to solve the world's problems
and to promote America's interests is not the sole work of a President and
Congress, but the combination of culture, mentality, political, and now
primarily economic, interests. This book has tons of footnoting, which allows
you to delve further into these issues on your own.
The author astutely reinforces the fact that the Militarist Mentality
won't change, regardless of which political party is in control of the Executive
and Houses of Congress in the United States. Here only some examples out
of many:
Entry of the U.S. military into the Middle East:
THE CARTER DOCTRINE:
The Carter Doctrine was prescribed at the State of the Union Address
in 1980. Another civilian prescription utilizing the military as medicine
to alleviate and even cure, political symptoms. This Doctrine began a new
era of U.S. involvement in the Middle East, specifically using the American
military to enforce its economic interests and lifestyle dependence on oil.
The Carter Doctrine was a major shift in American foreign policy in the
Middle East. It specifically stated that use
of the military can and will be used to enforce U.S. economic interests.
At his State of the Union Address, Carter stated:
"Any attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf
region will be declared as an assault on the vital interest of the United
States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary,
including military force" (p. 181).
Worth noting is that the Carter Doctrine was declared during the Cold
War, when there was a adversary to check U.S interests. Today, that rival
is gone.
Some argue the so-called 'War on Terror' is merely a historical continuation
of American foreign policy interests in using its military to promote its
geo-political and economic interests.
WAR AS SPECTATOR SPORT:
War has been, and now is presented as a spectacle. No different than
a spectator sport. Live reports, video display, and laymen presentations
of new technology, usually via video, to the civilian public at press conferences.
One example of many are current U.S. newspaper reports: they don't use
the term "wounded" when reporting about American soldiers in Iraq. They
use the euphemistic term, "injured." "17 Iraqis 'wounded' and 3 American
soldiers 'injured.'" Similar to similar to a football game. Slogans such
as "Shock and Awe, Support the Troops," and deck of cards identifying the
most wanted Baath party members. "Freedom is not Free." Many American military
personel (and civilians) have internalized this propaganda.
Using Hollywood To Enhance "Honor" and perpetuate myths:
Bacevich carefully details the planned and choreographed footage of George
W. Bush dressed as a fighter pilot on the USS Abraham Lincoln. This was
intentionally and specifically lifted from the movie "Top Gun." Immediately
after this planned footage, an action figure doll was created and sold for
$39.99. It was called the "Elite Force Aviator: George W. Bush: U.S. President
and Naval Aviator" (p. 31).
Well-dressed, handsome, and beautiful anchors report about the war in
such series as "The Week in War." More simulation of the spectator sport
of war in our pop culture. One segment in the "Week in War program" is called
"The Fallen," where the photo of a soldier, his name, age, and hometown
are presented, and the date of his death. Then the cameramen go to his family's
home. Often a family picture of the "fallen soldier" is shown. Then, an
interview with the somber, and at times tearful family in their living room,
sitting on their couch: "He was a good kid. He always wanted to help people."
The "Fallen" is related to a concept that the Germans began about 300
years ago. This concept is called the "Cult of the Fallen Soldier." When
a soldier is killed in war he is elevated to a higher status because of
his death. He is placed on a pedestal, because somehow, ay, he ificed" for
a noble cause that is often abstract or confusing to the public. To further
simplify the confusion and sullenness resulting from the soldier's death,
religion is often injected into the deceased soldiers elevation on a pedestal.
You can see this Cult of the Fallen Soldier in Arlington, Virgina today,
and in many military cemeteries around the world.
GLORIFICATION OF THE MILITARY THROUGH MOVIES:
Bacevich notes moves and their role. "Top Gun" had a tremendous impact
in many ways. Pop culture, and Navy recruiting sky-rocketing. As for the
flurry of "Vietnam war movies," again the noble concepts of "courage, honor,
fear, triumph" are latently and explicitly reinforced to the public of all
ages and socio-economic levels.
It took me a chapter or two to get used to Bacevich's writing style,
but I grew to like it.
Chapters: 1) Wilsonians Under Arms 2) The Military Professions at Bay
3) Left, Right, Center 4) California Dreaming 5) Onward 6) War Club 7) Blood
for Oil 8) Common Defense
"Support" for the military is often incorrectly linked with one's "patriotism."
This faulty thinking is perpetuated by the electronic and print media in
often subtle forms but extremely effective forms, and at times very explicit
and in aggressive manners. The government intentionally steers the publics'
focus to the 'Military aspects of war' to avoid attention to the more realistic
and vital 'political aspects.' The latter being at the real heart of the
motivation, manner, and outcome of most *political* conflicts.
Bacevich notes journalists: journalist Thomas Friedman complained that
a Super Bowl half-time show did not honor the "troops." He then drove to
the Command Center to visit and speak with the "troops." Soon after, he
carried on with his own self-centered interests, like everyone else.
The military in and of itself is not dangerous nor pernicious. The military
doesn't formulate foreign policy. The military just implements it, carrying
out the orders and instructions of elitist civilians who have never served
in the armed forces. It's not the military nor
the men and women serving in it, we must be wary of. It's the civilians
masters with vested interests in the governmental and corporate world who
must be held accountable.
General Creighton Abrams wanted to diminish the influence of civilian
control over the military after Vietnam. Civilians and politicians were
making military decisions. It seems the situation is similar in 2007. Chairman
of the JCS Peter Pace sounds political. History will be the judge.
This is a very insightful book for those interested in recent history
as well as the current situation the United States is in. The troops should
be supported for what they do. Because unfortunately they are the ones that
pay the price for elitist decisions made by upper-class civilians from the
Ivy League cliques that run the U.S. politically and economically.
Highly recommended and relevant to our contemporary times and our future.
Andrew Bacevich did excellent research and writing in this book. I'll
think we'll be hearing a lot more of him. Hopefully He'll get more access
to the public. If - the mainstream media allows it.
An Informed, Insightful, and Highly Readable Account of American Foreign
Policy Today, December 23, 2006
Andrew J. Bacevich's "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced
by War," should be read and considered carefully by every member of the national
political leadership in the United States as well as by adult Americans in general.
Bacevich brings impeccable credentials to his work in this book--professor of
history and international relations at Boston University, West Point graduate,
and veteran of the Vietnam conflict. His writing is engaging, insightful, and
historically well anchored. Importantly, this work is highly accessible and
eminently readable. The level of documentation is very valuable as well. Finally,
the book is not about fault-finding and finger-pointing toward any one national
figure or group.
What I found most beneficial was that the book presented well-argued alternative
historical "meta-narratives" that are much more closely aligned with post-World
War II historical events and processes than the ones currently accepted as "conventional
wisdom."
A case in point is the periodization of World War IV beginning with President
Carter's pronouncements regarding the Persian Gulf area in 1980 rather than
with the terrorist attacks on America on 9/11. "The New American Militarism"
carefully and credibly brings together the many seemingly disparate actions,
decisions, and events of the past 60+ years (e.g., the atomic bombing of Japan,
Vietnam, oil shortages of the 1970s and 80s, the end of the Cold War, the First
Gulf War, etc.) and illustrates important patterns and trends that help to explain
why United States' foreign policy is what it is today.
Dr. Bacevich's book helps us understand and appreciate that the global projection
of American military power today has deep roots in the national decisions and
behaviors of the second half of the twentieth century.
Robert S. Frey, M.A., MBA, MSM
Adjunct Professor, History
Brenau University
Editor/Publisher, BRIDGES: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Theology, Philosophy,
History, and Science
Why the U.S. Has Really Gone Broke
Chalmers Johnson Le Monde Diplomatique
February, 2008
Global confidence in the US economy has reached zero, as was proved
by last month’s stock market meltdown. But there is an enormous anomaly
in the US economy above and beyond the subprime mortgage crisis, the
housing bubble and the prospect of recession: 60 years of misallocation
of resources, and borrowings, to the establishment and maintenance of
a military-industrial complex as the basis of the nation’s economic
life
The military adventurers in the Bush administration have much in common
with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups
thought that they were the “smartest guys in the room” — the title of Alex
Gibney’s prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neoconservatives
in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even
to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars
and global domination.
As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself in the
anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards
or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no
longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge
standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed
or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries.
Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations
to pay or repudiate. This fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through
many manipulative financial schemes (causing poorer countries to lend us
unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching.
There are three broad aspects to the US debt crisis.
First, in the current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts
of money on “defence” projects that bear no relation to the national security
of the US. We are also keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segment
of the population at strikingly low levels.
Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating
erosion of our base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive
military expenditures — “military Keynesianism” (which I discuss in
detail in my book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic). By that,
I mean the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars,
huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can
indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually
true.
Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources),
we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements
for the long-term health of the US. These are what economists call opportunity
costs, things not done because we spent our money on something else. Our
public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We have failed to provide
health care to all our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the
world’s number one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness
as a manufacturer for civilian needs, an infinitely more efficient use of
scarce resources than arms manufacturing.
Fiscal disaster
It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our government
spends on the military. The Department of Defense’s planned expenditures
for the fiscal year 2008 are larger than all other nations’ military budgets
combined. The supplementary budget to pay for the current wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, not part of the official defence budget, is itself larger
than the combined military budgets of Russia and China. Defence-related
spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history.
The US has become the largest single seller of arms and munitions to other
nations on Earth. Leaving out President Bush’s two on-going wars, defence
spending has doubled since the mid-1990s. The defence budget for fiscal
2008 is the largest since the second world war.
Before we try to break down and analyse this gargantuan sum, there is
one important caveat. Figures on defence spending are notoriously unreliable.
The numbers released by the Congressional Reference Service and the Congressional
Budget Office do not agree with each other. Robert Higgs, senior fellow
for political economy at the Independent Institute, says: “A well-founded
rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon’s (always well publicised) basic budget
total and double it” (1). Even a cursory reading of newspaper articles about
the Department of Defense will turn up major differences in statistics about
its expenses. Some 30-40% of the defence budget is “black”,” meaning that
these sections contain hidden expenditures for classified projects. There
is no possible way to know what they include or whether their total amounts
are accurate.
There are many reasons for this budgetary sleight-of-hand — including
a desire for secrecy on the part of the president, the secretary of defence,
and the military-industrial complex — but the chief one is that members
of Congress, who profit enormously from defence jobs and pork-barrel projects
in their districts, have a political interest in supporting the Department
of Defense. In 1996, in an attempt to bring accounting standards within
the executive branch closer to those of the civilian economy, Congress passed
the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act. It required all federal
agencies to hire outside auditors to review their books and release the
results to the public. Neither the Department of Defense, nor the Department
of Homeland Security, has ever complied. Congress has complained, but not
penalised either department for ignoring the law. All numbers released by
the Pentagon should be regarded as suspect.
In discussing the fiscal 2008 defence budget, as released on 7 February
2007, I have been guided by two experienced and reliable analysts: William
D Hartung of the New America Foundation’s Arms and Security Initiative (2)
and Fred Kaplan, defence correspondent for Slate.org (3). They agree that
the Department of Defense requested $481.4bn for salaries, operations (except
in Iraq and Afghanistan), and equipment. They also agree on a figure of
$141.7bn for the “supplemental” budget to fight the global war on terrorism
— that is, the two on-going wars that the general public may think are actually
covered by the basic Pentagon budget. The Department of Defense also asked
for an extra $93.4bn to pay for hitherto unmentioned war costs in the remainder
of 2007 and, most creatively, an additional “allowance” (a new term in defence
budget documents) of $50bn to be charged to fiscal year 2009. This makes
a total spending request by the Department of Defense of $766.5bn.
But there is much more. In an attempt to disguise the true size of
the US military empire, the government has long hidden major military-related
expenditures in departments other than Defense. For example, $23.4bn
for the Department of Energy goes towards developing and maintaining nuclear
warheads; and $25.3bn in the Department of State budget is spent on foreign
military assistance (primarily for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait,
Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Republic, Egypt and Pakistan). Another $1.03bn
outside the official Department of Defense budget is now needed for recruitment
and re-enlistment incentives for the overstretched US military, up from
a mere $174m in 2003, when the war in Iraq began. The Department of Veterans
Affairs currently gets at least $75.7bn, 50% of it for the long-term care
of the most seriously injured among the 28,870 soldiers so far wounded in
Iraq and 1,708 in Afghanistan. The amount is universally derided as inadequate.
Another $46.4bn goes to the Department of Homeland Security.
Missing from this compilation is $1.9bn to the Department of Justice
for the paramilitary activities of the FBI; $38.5bn to the Department of
the Treasury for the Military Retirement Fund; $7.6bn for the military-related
activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and well
over $200bn in interest for past debt-financed defence outlays. This brings
US spending for its military establishment during the current fiscal year,
conservatively calculated, to at least $1.1 trillion.
Military Keynesianism
Such expenditures are not only morally obscene, they are fiscally unsustainable.
Many neo-conservatives and poorly informed patriotic Americans believe that,
even though our defence budget is huge, we can afford it because we are
the richest country on Earth. That statement is no longer true. The world’s
richest political entity, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, is the
European Union. The EU’s 2006 GDP was estimated to be slightly larger than
that of the US. Moreover, China’s 2006 GDP was only slightly smaller than
that of the US, and Japan was the world’s fourth richest nation.
A more telling comparison that reveals just how much worse we’re doing
can be found among the current accounts of various nations. The current
account measures the net trade surplus or deficit of a country plus cross-border
payments of interest, royalties, dividends, capital gains, foreign aid,
and other income. In order for Japan to manufacture anything, it must import
all required raw materials. Even after this incredible expense is met, it
still has an $88bn per year trade surplus with the US and enjoys the world’s
second highest current account balance (China is number one). The US is
number 163 — last on the list, worse than countries such as Australia and
the UK that also have large trade deficits. Its 2006 current account deficit
was $811.5bn; second worst was Spain at $106.4bn. This is unsustainable.
It’s not just that our tastes for foreign goods, including imported oil,
vastly exceed our ability to pay for them. We are financing them through
massive borrowing. On 7 November 2007, the US Treasury announced that the
national debt had breached _$9 trillion for the first time. This was just
five weeks after Congress raised the “debt ceiling” to $9.815 trillion.
If you begin in 1789, at the moment the constitution became the supreme
law of the land, the debt accumulated by the federal government did not
top $1 trillion until 1981. When George Bush became president in January
2001, it stood at approximately $5.7 trillion. Since then, it has increased
by 45%. This huge debt can be largely explained by our defence expenditures.
Our excessive military expenditures did not occur over just a few
short years or simply because of the Bush administration’s policies. They
have been going on for a very long time in accordance with a superficially
plausible ideology, and have now become so entrenched in our democratic
political system that they are starting to wreak havoc. This is military
Keynesianism — the determination to maintain a permanent war economy and
to treat military output as an ordinary economic product, even though it
makes no contribution to either production or consumption.
This ideology goes back to the first years of the cold war. During the
late 1940s, the US was haunted by economic anxieties. The great depression
of the 1930s had been overcome only by the war production boom of the second
world war. With peace and demobilisation, there was a pervasive fear that
the depression would return. During 1949, alarmed by the Soviet Union’s
detonation of an atomic bomb, the looming Communist victory in the Chinese
civil war, a domestic recession, and the lowering of the Iron Curtain around
the USSR’s European satellites, the US sought to draft basic strategy for
the emerging cold war. The result was the militaristic National Security
Council Report 68 (NSC-68) drafted under the supervision of Paul Nitze,
then head of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department. Dated 14
April 1950 and signed by President Harry S Truman on 30 September 1950,
it laid out the basic public economic policies that the US pursues to the
present day.
In its conclusions, NSC-68 asserted: “One of the most significant lessons
of our World War II experience was that the American economy, when it operates
at a level approaching full efficiency, can provide enormous resources for
purposes other than civilian consumption while simultaneously providing
a high standard of living” (4).
With this understanding, US strategists began to build up a massive munitions
industry, both to counter the military might of the Soviet Union (which
they consistently overstated) and also to maintain full employment, as well
as ward off a possible return of the depression. The result was that, under
Pentagon leadership, entire new industries were created to manufacture large
aircraft, nuclear-powered submarines, nuclear warheads, intercontinental
ballistic missiles, and surveillance and communications satellites. This
led to what President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address
of 6 February 1961: “The conjunction of an immense military establishment
and a large arms industry is new in the American experience” — the military-industrial
complex.
By 1990 the value of the weapons, equipment and factories devoted
to the Department of Defense was 83% of the value of all plants and equipment
in US manufacturing. From 1947 to 1990, the combined US military budgets
amounted to $8.7 trillion. Even though the Soviet Union no longer exists,
US reliance on military Keynesianism has, if anything, ratcheted up, thanks
to the massive vested interests that have become entrenched around the military
establishment. Over time, a commitment to both guns and butter has proven
an unstable configuration. Military industries crowd out the civilian economy
and lead to severe economic weaknesses. Devotion to military Keynesianism
is a form of slow economic suicide.
Higher spending, fewer jobs
On 1 May 2007, the Center for Economic and Policy Research of Washington,
DC, released a study prepared by the economic and political forecasting
company Global Insight on the long-term economic impact of increased military
spending. Guided by economist Dean Baker, this research showed that, after
an initial demand stimulus, by about the sixth year the effect of increased
military spending turns negative. The US economy has had to cope with growing
defence spending for more than 60 years. Baker found that, after 10 years
of higher defence spending, there would be 464,000 fewer jobs than in a
scenario that involved lower defence spending.
Baker concluded: “It is often believed that wars and military spending
increases are good for the economy. In fact, most economic models show that
military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption
and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment”
(5).
These are only some of the many deleterious effects of military Keynesianism.
It was believed that the US could afford both a massive military establishment
and a high standard of living, and that it needed both to maintain full
employment. But it did not work out that way. By the 1960s it was becoming
apparent that turning over the nation’s largest manufacturing enterprises
to the Department of Defense and producing goods without any investment
or consumption value was starting to crowd out civilian economic activities.
The historian Thomas E Woods Jr observes that, during the 1950s and 1960s,
between one-third and two-thirds of all US research talent was siphoned
off into the military sector (6). It is, of course, impossible to know what
innovations never appeared as a result of this diversion of resources and
brainpower into the service of the military, but it was during the 1960s
that we first began to notice Japan was outpacing us in the design and quality
of a range of consumer goods, including household electronics and automobiles.
Can we reverse the trend?
Nuclear weapons furnish a striking illustration of these anomalies. Between
the 1940s and 1996, the US spent at least $5.8 trillion on the development,
testing and construction of nuclear bombs. By 1967, the peak year of its
nuclear stockpile, the US possessed some 32,500 deliverable atomic and hydrogen
bombs, none of which, thankfully, was ever used. They perfectly illustrate
the Keynesian principle that the government can provide make-work jobs to
keep people employed. Nuclear weapons were not just America’s secret weapon,
but also its secret economic weapon. As of 2006, we still had 9,960 of them.
There is today no sane use for them, while the trillions spent on them could
have been used to solve the problems of social security and health care,
quality education and access to higher education for all, not to speak of
the retention of highly-skilled jobs within the economy.
The pioneer in analysing what has been lost as a result of military Keynesianism
was the late Seymour Melman (1917-2004), a professor of industrial engineering
and operations research at Columbia University. His 1970 book, Pentagon
Capitalism: The Political Economy of War, was a prescient analysis of the
unintended consequences of the US preoccupation with its armed forces and
their weaponry since the onset of the cold war. Melman wrote: “From 1946
to 1969, the United States government spent over $1,000bn on the military,
more than half of this under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations — the
period during which the [Pentagon-dominated] state management was established
as a formal institution. This sum of staggering size (try to visualize a
billion of something) does not express the cost of the military establishment
to the nation as a whole. The true cost is measured by what has been foregone,
by the accumulated deterioration in many facets of life, by the inability
to alleviate human wretchedness of long duration.”
In an important exegesis on Melman’s relevance to the current American
economic situation, Thomas Woods writes: “According to the US Department
of Defense, during the four decades from 1947 through 1987 it used (in 1982
dollars) $7.62 trillion in capital resources. In 1985, the Department of
Commerce estimated the value of the nation’s plant and equipment, and infrastructure,
at just over _$7.29 trillion… The amount spent over that period could have
doubled the American capital stock or modernized and replaced its existing
stock” (7).
The fact that we did not modernise or replace our capital assets is
one of the main reasons why, by the turn of the 21st century, our manufacturing
base had all but evaporated. Machine tools, an industry on which Melman
was an authority, are a particularly important symptom. In November 1968,
a five-year inventory disclosed “that 64% of the metalworking machine tools
used in US industry were 10 years old or older. The age of this industrial
equipment (drills, lathes, etc.) marks the United States’ machine tool stock
as the oldest among all major industrial nations, and it marks the continuation
of a deterioration process that began with the end of the second world war.
This deterioration at the base of the industrial system certifies to the
continuous debilitating and depleting effect that the military use of capital
and research and development talent has had on American industry.”
Nothing has been done since 1968 to reverse these trends and it shows
today in our massive imports of equipment — from medical machines like _proton
accelerators for radiological therapy (made primarily in Belgium, Germany,
and Japan) to cars and trucks.
Our short tenure as the world’s lone superpower has come to an end. As
Harvard economics professor Benjamin Friedman has written: “Again and again
it has always been the world’s leading lending country that has been the
premier country in terms of political influence, diplomatic influence and
cultural influence. It’s no accident that we took over the role from the
British at the same time that we took over the job of being the world’s
leading lending country. Today we are no longer the world’s leading lending
country. In fact we are now the world’s biggest debtor country, and we are
continuing to wield influence on the basis of military prowess alone” (8).
Some of the damage can never be rectified. There are, however, some
steps that the US urgently needs to take. These include reversing Bush’s
2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthy, beginning to liquidate our global
empire of over 800 military bases, cutting from the defence budget all projects
that bear no relationship to national security and ceasing to use the defence
budget as a Keynesian jobs programme.
If we do these things we have a chance of squeaking by. If we
don’t, we face probable national insolvency and a long depression.
(1) Robert Higgs, “The Trillion-Dollar Defense Budget Is Already Here” ,
The Independent Institute, 15 March 2007, http://www.independent.org/newsroom
...
(2) William D Hartung, “Bush Military Budget Highest Since WWII”, 10 February
2007, http://www.commondreams.org/views07 ...
(3) Fred Kaplan, “It’s Time to Sharpen the Scissors”, 5 February 2007, http://www.slate.com/id/2159102/pag
...
(4) See http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1 ...
(5) Center for Economic and Policy Research, 1 May 2007, http://www.cepr.net/content/view/11
...
(6) Thomas E Woods, “What the Warfare State Really Costs”, http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/wo
...
(7) Thomas E Woods, Ibid.
(8) John F Ince, “Think the Nation’s Debt Doesn’t Affect You? Think Again”,
20 March 2007, http://www.alternet.org/story/49418 /
Should Democrats "ratchet down their hostility to newspapers and begin crusading
on behalf of these imperiled organizations"?:
MSM, RIP, The Editors, The New Republic: ...Thirty-six percent of Americans
now say that the press "hurts" democracy. Many others wouldn't express their
feelings in ... such ... terms but share the basic disrespectful sentiment.
Put another way, the crisis in journalism is even deeper than the crisis
in its business model. It is suffering a crisis of legitimacy.
We all know the long list of scandals that has bloodied the profession--from
Jayson Blair to Judith Miller to Dan Rather. But to focus only on these
wrecks both misses the point and blames the victim. Just as the press has
been slammed by the tides of technology, it has been hit hard by the political
culture. The master narratives of both the right and the left have come
to include the same villain: the hypocritical, biased elite media. And their
combined grouching has helped foment the anti-media backlash.
On the right, the history of press-bashing is venerable... But during
the Bush years, and thanks to Fox News, the critique of the liberal media
was canonized...
A mirror version of this ... emerged on the left. In this telling, it
was the timid, lazy press corps that failed to rigorously challenge the
president's core (mendacious) claims about his tax cuts and rationale for
heading to war. Very valid criticisms. But these specific objections morphed
into populist broadsides against what the left came to describe as "the
mainstream media"--avatars of establishmentarian groupthink who bend to
the latest conventional wisdom emerging from D.C. cocktail parties and neurotically
fret that they might be just as biased as their conservative critics allege.
On The Huffington Post and its ilk, you would find rants about how "Beltway
media really makes no effort to do anything other than parrot totally out-of-touch
conventional wisdom--no matter how inane, stupid and ridiculous it is."
This rhetoric creates a poisonous atmosphere. By assaulting the credibility
of the press, it destroys its authority in the culture, giving cover to
politicians who would rather avoid dealing with reporters in the first place.
... When the administration needed to make its case, it took to the local
press or Fox News, where it had no fear of probing questions.
At times, Obama has hinted that he will borrow from the Bush playbook
and deal with the press only as he pleases, using new technology to vault
over the old arbiters. Fortunately, that hasn't been his methodology in
recent weeks... This is fortunate, because Obama is presiding over a turning-point
moment in media history.
Obama can help set a tone for liberals, convincing them to ratchet down
their hostility to newspapers and begin crusading on behalf of these imperiled
organizations. The media deserves liberal critics, who hold it accountable.
But it also deserves liberal defenders because a press working toward the
ideal of objectivity is often the only means of blunting government or business
run amok... Even the press's fiercest critics have been forced to acknowledge
and fear its findings--an authority that will never exist in a world consisting
entirely of partisan outlets. ...
Many venerable newspapers and magazines will close in the coming weeks
and months; the ones that remain will be attenuated. But the old ideals
embodied in these institutions must not be permitted to join the carnage.
When the press does its job well, it deserves defenders, and when it does
a lousy job, it deserves being taken to task. The complaint seems to be that
the criticism is without foundation, and there's some of that, but the fundamental
problem is not, in my view, the people doing the criticizing, it's the media
companies themselves. The argument also seems to treat "media" as something
other than Fox News. I agree that the term journalism conjures up another image,
as it should, but presently Fox News isn't clearly separate from other media
outlets, far from it, and the commingling of all of these sources of information
in the minds of the public is part of the problem. If journalists in the mainstream
media want respect, they need to differentiate themselves from the "partisan
outlets," including calling foul loudly and in no uncertain terms when Fox or
whomever crosses the line, and they also need to do a better job themselves
of establishing and maintaining their credibility through solid reporting.
While recovering from an extracted wisdom tooth this morning, I cheered up when
I saw that
Talking Points Memo and
other blogs have picked up
my grousing about George Will’s error-laden global warming column in the
Washington Post. When I first became aware of Will’s column on Monday,
it seemed to me the perfect example of the general
problem with treating op-ed pages as “opinion.” That is, if by opinion, you
mean that someone doesn’t have to adhere to the facts. I could state that the
Earth is 6000 years old, and no one would dare correct me, because it’s just
my opinion. (I guess that’s the rationale that led Forbes and US News to run
pieces by young-Earth
creationists as “commentary” a couple weeks ago in “honor” of Darwin’s birthday.
[Okay. No more air quotes. Promise.])
Now we
learn via Andrew Alexander, the Washington Post’s ombudsman, that
the editorial page has a whole team of fact-checkers. Or at least there are
personal assistants to George Will, a couple syndication editors, and Post copy
editors who have been identified as fact-checkers. Somehow, this army all decided
that Will’s piece was just dandy. Even weirder was the post-modern refusal to
run a correction from Alan Shearer, the Washington Post Writers Group editorial
director: “We have plenty of references that support what George wrote, and
we have others that dispute that. So we didn’t have enough to send in a correction.”
It seems as if the Washington Post just doesn’t think this is important.
Via Jay Rosen I learned that Alexander’s
inaugural ombudsman column today has nary a mention of the affair–even though
Alexander himself made inquiries. Maybe Alexander just wanted to say “Hello,
World,” in his first piece, without diving straight into any particular complaints.
That’s fine. Let’s see what he writes about once the niceties are out of the
way. (He invites email:
ombudsman@washpost.com )
My own opinion is that this was a serious screw-up, but not an easy one to
solve in any systemic way. In an ideal world, editorial pages would employ full-time
fact-checkers who felt no fear in pointing out small and large errors of fact.
Only after their objections had been satisfied would a column see the light
of day. That’s what happens to articles at some magazines today.
In the real world, though, a lot of magazines don’t have fact-checkers on
staff, and they expect writers to do the fact-checking themselves. It’s particularly
tough for newspapers, which churn out so many stories a day. To fact-check those
stories well, they’d have to hire back a fair amount of the people they’ve laid
off in recent years. I assume the same probably goes for editorial pages, although
I can’t say for sure, never having dealt with them myself.
Still, it remains seriously weird for a national newspaper to run a piece
that they claim has been thoroughly fact-checked, which has since been showed
to be plainly flawed. It’s also weird for it to then refuse to run a correction
based on a bogus sense of balance about the evidence of how much ice there is
in the world and what that means for climate change.
A lot of people have left comments here complaining about George Will. And
others have then accused them (and me) of being part of a left-wing conspiracy,
attacking Will while letting the inaccuracies of others slide by. For me this
is not really about Will. It’s about how newspapers and magazines succeed or
fail to convey science as accurately as possible. And this case is a textbook
example of failure. I hope something is learned from it.
[Update, 2/22: I’ve added a
new post addressing some confusion over some late-breaking news about the
satellites that measure ice. And along the way, we are reminded of just how
weak the multi-layered fact-checking at the Washington Post editorial page is.]
Having a bit of a journalism background, it’s easy to apply Riddell’s
Law (”Any sufficiently developed incompetence is indistinguishable from
conspiracy”) to understand why the factcheckers didn’t call Will on his
gibberish. Even before the big newspaper layoffs,
most factcheckers were and are interns or part-time wage slaves hopeful
that they’d be hired if they just shut up, take the abuse, and continue
to kiss editorial butt. The last thing you want to do, in
that situation, is point out that one of the paper’s star columnists is
full of garbage, especially if you can point out line and verse.
Speaking as someone who faced a literal temper tantrum when an assistant
editor discovered that I was getting more and better reviews of my articles
than he was for his, I can tell you that nothing
combines an ego big enough to produce tides and a skin too thin to be used
for condoms than a newspaper columnist. This is especially
true when the critic is a part-time employee within the columnist’s own
organization, the columnist has an overarching sense of his own importance,
and when the paper’s editors are too cowardly,
lazy, or arrogant to tell their drinking buddy to rewrite or kill the column.
That’s why nobody was willing to face Will’s wrath.
Tom Curley, head of Associated Press, says that US military officials threatened
to "ruin" the AP if it covered the war in Iraq in unflattering ways. [
Harper's ]
The
US State Department will spend about $4.7-billion on "public relations" inside
the US this year. The biggest chunk of that, not surprisingly, is spent on advertising
and recruiting aimed at adolescents and young adults to get them into the war
machine. I'm a little surprised that AP is willing to use the word "propaganda"
to describe what the Pentagon is doing, but of course that's the correct word,
and it's either illegal or ought to be.
"If
we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question
authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power.
But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions,
then those in power work for us."
Mr Obama promised greater use of diplomacy and greater emphasis on building
alliances around the world as he formally introduced his national security team,
which included Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
But the former Illinois senator, whose rise was built on his opposition to
the Iraq war, delivered a message of surprising toughness that at times could
have come from George W Bush.
Poland is just the latest fall guy for an American foreign policy dictated
by military industrial lobbyists in Washington
It's a novel way to take your own life. Just as Russia demonstrates what
happens to former minions that annoy it, Poland agrees to host a US missile
defence base. The Russians, as Poland expected, respond to this proposal by
offering to turn the country into a parking lot. This proves that the missile
defence system is necessary after all: it will stop the missiles Russia will
now aim at Poland, the Czech Republic and the UK in response to, er, their involvement
in the missile defence system.
The American government insists that the interceptors, which will be stationed
on the Baltic coast, have nothing to do with Russia: their purpose is to defend
Europe and the US against the intercontinental ballistic missiles Iran and North
Korea don't possess. This is why they are being placed in Poland, which, as
every geography student in Texas knows, shares a border with both rogue states.
They permit us to look forward to a glowing future, in which missile defence,
according to the Pentagon, will "protect our homeland ... and our friends and
allies from ballistic missile attack"; as long as the Russians wait until it's
working before they nuke us. The good news is that, at the present rate of progress,
reliable missile defence is only 50 years away. The bad news is that it has
been 50 years away for the past six decades.
The system has been in development since 1946, and so far it has achieved
a grand total of nothing. You wouldn't know it if you read the press releases
published by the Pentagon's missile defence agency: the word "success" features
more often than any other noun. It is true that the programme has managed to
hit two out of the five missiles fired over the past five years during tests
of its main component, the ground-based midcourse missile defence (GMD) system.
But, sadly, these tests bear no relation to anything resembling a real nuclear
strike.
All the trials run so far - successful or otherwise - have been rigged. The
target, its type, trajectory and destination, are known before the test begins.
Only one enemy missile is used, as the system doesn't have a hope in hell of
knocking down two or more. If decoy missiles are deployed, they bear no resemblance
to the target and they are identified as decoys in advance. In order to try
to enhance the appearance of success, recent flight tests have become even less
realistic: the agency has now stopped using decoys altogether when testing its
GMD system.
This points to one of the intractable weaknesses of missile defence: it is
hard to see how the interceptors could ever outwit enemy attempts to confuse
them. As Philip Coyle - formerly a senior official at the Pentagon with responsibility
for missile defence - points out, there are endless means by which another state
could fool the system. For every real missile it launched, it could dispatch
a host of dummies with the same radar and infra-red signatures. Even balloons
or bits of metal foil would render anything resembling the current system inoperable.
You can reduce a missile's susceptibility to laser penetration by 90% by painting
it white. This sophisticated avoidance technology, available from your local
hardware shop, makes another multibillion component of the programme obsolete.
Or you could simply forget about ballistic missiles and attack using cruise
missiles, against which the system is useless.
Missile defence is so expensive and the measures required to evade it so
cheap that if the US government were serious about making the system work it
would bankrupt the country, just as the arms race helped to bring the Soviet
Union down. By spending a couple of billion dollars on decoy technologies, Russia
would commit the US to trillions of dollars of countermeasures. The cost ratios
are such that even Iran could outspend the US.
The US has spent between $120bn and $150bn on the programme since Ronald
Reagan relaunched it in 1983. Under George Bush, the costs have accelerated.
The Pentagon has requested $62bn for the next five-year tranche, which means
that the total cost between 2003 and 2013 will be $110bn. Yet there are no clear
criteria for success. As a recent paper in the journal Defense and Security
Analysis shows, the Pentagon invented asures that the costs spiral out of control.
Spiral development means, in the words of a Pentagon directive, that "the
end-state requirements are not known at programme initiation". Instead, the
system is allowed to develop in whatever way officials think fit. The result
is that no one has the faintest idea what the programme is supposed to achieve,
or whether it has achieved it. There are no fixed dates, no fixed costs for
any component of the programme, no penalties for slippage or failure, no standards
of any kind against which the system can be judged. And this monstrous scheme
is still incapable of achieving what a few hundred dollars' worth of diplomacy
could do in an afternoon.
So why commit endless billions to a programme that is bound to fail? I'll
give you a clue: the answer is in the question. It persists because it doesn't
work.
US politics, because of the failure by both Republicans and Democrats to
deal with the problems of campaign finance, is rotten from head to toe. But
under Bush, the corruption has acquired Nigerian qualities. Federal government
is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries that give millions
of dollars in political donations with contracts worth billions. Missile defence
is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding that won't run out, however
much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing
and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work.
To keep the pudding flowing, the administration must exaggerate the threats
from nations that have no means of nuking it - and ignore the likely responses
of those that do. Russia is not without its own corrupting influences. You could
see the grim delight of the Russian generals and defence officials last week,
who have found in this new deployment an excuse to enhance their power and demand
bigger budgets. Poor old Poland, like the Czech Republic and the UK, gets strongarmed
into becoming America's groundbait.
If we seek to understand American foreign policy in terms of a rational engagement
with international problems, or even as an effective means of projecting power,
we are looking in the wrong place. The government's interests have always been
provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at crucial stages
of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to
television companies run by eccentric billionaires.
The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic
policies which it projects beyond its borders. That they threaten
the world with 57 varieties of destruction is of no concern to the current administration.
The only question of interest is who gets paid and what the political kickbacks
will be.
I trust the facts cited by George Monbiot are true.
If so, I have two questions :
1. Is this what Eisenhower meant when he said in 1961 :
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists
and will persist. "
2. Why did no one in the American public listen to him then, and why
does no one remember what he said now? Is this proof of the dumbness of
the American electorate?
All this hyperbole about Russia invading europe city
by city is credit to our subserviant media and the corporations seeking welfare.
Russian anger does not relate to the efficiency of these inceptors, there is
growing concensus in defence journals and forums relating to my field of advanced
propulsion systems that the system is useless.
The Russian know this however their anger stems from US hegemony, and the
military bases that accompany these silos in states that border their country.
Imagine Georgia had carried out its recent aggression whilst hosting US troops
on its soil invited to guard its missile defence system ?
The outcome would almost certainly be WW3.
Our media in the West (in order to talk up the threat) gives the impression
of a Russia hell bent on recapturing its soviet glory days with Putin, the Tsar
who has swept aside the oligarch for the glory of mother Russia when in fact
the rich still very much rule a corrupt Russia.
It may well continue to oil its military machine and settle on being a regional
hyper power but before overstating a "resurgent" Russia we should bear in mind
Moscow and Russia are two worlds apart.
Most of the country is still in poverty, abuse of alcohol and other substances,
disease, stress, and other afflictions are rampant.
