Originally published at http://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/11/endless-war-abroad-and-endless-suffering-home-peace-group-warns-against-making-ndaa
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Iâve read that our court system is where people go in as hogs and come out as pork. Thatâs also the story of wars, because at least one side has to lose and often both sides lose in a war of attrition.
Modern wars arenât really bipolar affairs anymore. Too often theyâre based partly on how much money you can borrow on the spot market based on what property you can seize and how many honest citizens you can reduce to permanent serfdom to pay back your creditors and make a good profit. If, as it sometimes happens, youâre losing a particular war, too often your creditors want their money back fast and wonât lend you any new cash.
On top of this, the modern world is overloaded with unscrupulous characters, cartels and governments. A war is often as not when you sell out to the worst of the worst. When the U.S. invades a country, too often they ask the local drug kingpins to run the government. The recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia was really between Turkey and Russia, who have been allies lately. Donald Trump sold out the Kurds. Then again, every administration has sold out the Kurds.
Into this mess wades Uncle Bomb. Uncle Bombâs best friends are enormous oil companies.
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Clearly a Crime Against Humanity. Those responsible should surrender themselves at the Hague, alongside their corporate masters in the war profiteering industries. No wonder Earth is in danger, at the tipping point. Here be psychopaths in suits.
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Americaâs military presence across the globe has always been a bi-partisan issue. War is âgood businessâ and militarism is inherent within the capitalist system
A short essay on the topic of war
~https://www.worldsocialism.org/wsm/2020/12/03/ending-war/
But Mark Twain said it very much better over a hundred years ago.
~https://www.worldsocialism.org/wsm/2020/12/01/mark-twains-the-war-prayer/
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Itâs the world view that needs to be challenged .
The idea of Disunity and belief in Insufficiency. The cultural story creating illusions of separation of humans from each other and the divine and thinking and acting like there is not enough resources to go around .
A New Story for Humanity will have to be written based on what is so and what works for the highest good of all.Fallacy and illusion twists the minds of those in power . Corruption comes in many forms. Itâs corruption of the mind that we must pay attention to.
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just to point out --we could cut the military budget by 50% and still have the biggest and most expensive military in the worldânot that all the money has produced a military that actually wins the fightâour recordâfought to a standstill(for decades) by the Koreansâgot our butts kicked by the Vietnamese-and are being successfully fought to a virtual stalemate by illiterate poorly armed tribesmen in the Middle East in many different countries for the last 20 yearsâtruly a record of failure that is the US militaryâs claim to fame since WWIIâoh to be fairâwe beat up on those great military powers of Grenada and Panamaâoverthrew a few democratically elected governments and a few not so democratic governments(leaving slave markets , famine and disease in our wake), and bombed the hell out of poor third world peoples and their countries for decades on several continentsâ what a wonderful record the military has produced for all that money
the real purpose of the US military is to funnel money out of our economy into the pockets of the military industrialistsâwho have become filthy rich on spreading all that death for all those years-the capitalist dream --produce things that need to be continually replaced as we use up them up on the killing of people all over the globe-ainât capitalism great??
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They are, however, not mutually exclusive concerns, but intertwined down the invasisve species of late stage predatory capitalism, an infecting scourge on brains and minds of the effete. The 99% have become the âeliteâ in more cases than not while the financialized privileges of the power engorged are, indeed, the incapable âeffeteâ. âeffersâ or âeffingâ parasitic dependencies. So terrified that the general populous will become cognizant of just how rapacious their lies are, the stand-off is only just beginning.
The REAL effete socialist slush funding for bludgeons because the beneficiaries are deadbeats. unbelievable. Like a twisted version of the flintstones with the us in the role of bam-bam.
Wang had a great idea with the 2k a month. How would we pay for it? Defund the military industrial congressional complex. Have more than enough left over to have medicare for all, free public education for as many years as needed and long term care for all.
Of course, weâll have to extrerminate the family of grizzly bezrs living under my bed. Iâll need an F35 for that.
I would also add, the narrative that the military is protecting " our freedoms" has to be one of the most egregious, canards told to the American people since WW11. The only freedoms the military is protectingâŚIS THE HUBRIS, HEGEMONY AND VESTED INTERESTS OF THE FASCIST, AMERIKAN, WORLD WIDE EMPIRE!
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They care so very little for the well being of the actual people of this nation.
The senate voted 84 to 13 to support the endless suffering at home. If America is not a military dictatorship, then I do not what else to call it!
Almost stole my thunder. I was going to say that back in the day we didnât put up with criminality. If cave dwellers found a pick pocket, outright thief, or had an overly abusive person they would no longer be welcome in the cave.
" U.S. military bases named after Confederate leaders," If I hadnât been born here, New Jersey my parentsâ 1950âs never never land , I would be nonplussed. The United States military has named some of its bases after traitors who attempted to break up the country and killed thousands of their fellow Americans in the process. All to preserve a economic system based on slavery, which even Britain- the ruthless empire that the sun never set on- had outlawed thirty years previous.
Imagine if Germany had bases named: Fort Goebbels, or the Goering Airbase, or the Himmler Federal Prison. Germans learned from their mistakes; a year in high school history is spent on WWII and usually includes a visit to a camp. Show a swastika or a heil salute in public and its off to jail; on the other hand, something only a tourist would be stupid enough to do.
On another track; the best choice for SECDEF would be an accountant with auditing experience. The Pentagon is the only agency that has not accomplished an audit. That is because they move money around internally like a mobster laundering his drug revenues. No one has been able to even finish an audit-totally crooked, sort of like the CIAâs black budget. This would be the best beginning at trimming the fat. Itâs hard to argue with efficiency; just saying cut the budget broadly isnât politically astute as the Generals, in their infinite wisdom, have made sure there are significant âdefenseâ industries and/or bases in every state including chilly Alaska. Any congress critter who votes against the NDAA can be accused by his rivals as killing jobs in his state. In Washington we had a Senator known as the âSenator from Boeingâ; heâs gone but I think Patty âTennis shoesâ Murray is on a similar track.
It really boils down to the fact that the so called âdefense budgetâ has less to do with defense than -especially if you look at some of the junk they buy, F-35s $14 billion aircraft carriers that could be taken out by one hypersonic missile or a nuke torpedo(the latter is 1950âs technology); what is known as âporkâ.
Hi Rickshaw51,
I thought Iâd share my diatribe of another day regarding a sheepdog-like article that I came across on the general theme of discussion. Sadly, it represents the only logical explanation that I have for Americaâs near maniacal War on Peace, sans the confluence of Evangelical influence and proud anti-intellectualism.
Best regards,
^^^^^^
Dear AUTHOR,
Per todayâs referenced article regarding unapologetic US hegemony buttressed by military belligerence, that âTo many Americans and foreigners alike, this power appears as a natural fact of international relationsâ is, unfortunately, the reality.
Notwithstanding the Greater Israel Project being rammed down the throats of every single US political representative by AIPAC and then regurgitated by the former to the masses as the way it must be, true blame for international bloodlust lies with the average American citizen, if the US is indeed a democracy.
The unquestioned ease of the relatively unearned and limitless bread-and-butter lives of Americans is the opiate that makes them cheer war as senseless baboons might. Were the US military stripped down to the level of that only required for immediate defense of the state, then around fifty million Americans would have to actually work for a living, rather than rely on military welfare, Ă la saccharine-sweet accolades of âThank you for your service.â
It would lead to riots.
After all, people need to earn a living ⌠and McDonaldâs has only so many open positions ⌠and, despite the sheep-shill notion of âAmerican Exceptionalismâ, not necessarily every one of the lot would automatically qualify for a spot on âAmericaâs Next Top Talented Ninja-Model Warriorâ ⌠.
Just a thought.
âGod bless the Troops!â
Best regards,
^^^^^^
Following is the article referenced:
[h]ttps://newrepublic.com/article/159672/tomorrow-world-wertheim-book-review-birth-america-world-power
Oh my goodness - someone actually said it!
I agree with you 1x10^6%!
However, Michael, you know as well as I do that itâs much more fun, socially acceptable and - letâs face it - requires significantly less effort to engage in ârent-a-crowdâ type protests, be they against the death penalty in the US or engaging in faux virtue signaling because some idiot didnât refer to Bidenâs wife as âDr. So-and-soâ.
I too wish that this same amount of energy would be applied, consistently - and regardless of federal election slates and outcomes, the current fad of saving a particular mildew specie in Pottawatomie Lake or, otherwise, the vegan bake sale at Weed RâUs - to, for instance, what the Palestinians experience every single day! If, for some reason, these virtue signalers find it necessary to employ contrived mental gymnastics and wax ad infinitum on how not all Jews are Israelis or Zionists or whatever the hell else the particular permutation-of-the-day cop out is, then try thinking about how Venezuela has been in the crosshairs of hostile US foreign policy since 1998 ⌠and how their Lord Savior On High, The Drone King, declared Venezuela a threat to US national security in 2015 (what a total crock!) and how the economic sanctions over the past few years have resulted in over a quarter-of-a-million deaths; note that I havenât applied the smarmy, saccharine-sweet distinction of âcivilian casualtiesâ here - murder is murder - weâre not supposed to be there in the first place as Venezuelaâs invasion of the US has been limited to Citgo gas stations ⌠.
Then again, Madeline Albright said something similar about those half-a-million filthy little Muslim children murdered in Eye-raq some years ago via US economic sanctions ⌠and everyone exclaimed, in classic faux Progressive, sheep-shill Americana, non-sequitur fashion, âAmen and Hallelujah, at least we donât have a Republican in the White House now to prevent my unwed pregnant daughter from exercising her lifelong dream and God-given right to marry Americaâs first black gay astronaut.â
So, these feckless, flag-waving cheerleaders for âThe List of Things that are Not of any Immediate Importance to Greater Humanity in the Leastâ can pat themselves on the back and calmly go back to sipping their mocha lattes - Trumpâs out. Everything will automatically be better under the bought-and-paid-for President Harris - in this case, Biden is the window dressing so I guess that diversity has won, after all, if youâre into simply checking the boxes, which it what it really devolves into in the end. Now, isnât that special?