It's Enough to Make You Resume Blogging

"Heroes" on Parade

My brother-in-law sent me this article. He said he thought I might "appreciate" it. Well, hell, yeah. I appreciate his pointing me to this, and I appreciate the article like a rampant case of jock itch. Like many other nefarious things going on, I had no idea. This is a miserable piece of news.

It turns out that our so-called "defense" department is paying out millions of dollars to NFL teams to have them honor the troops with salutes and various other displays at games. Fourteen teams and $5.4 million from 2010-14, to be precise. Now I know there are many more millions than that in this country that won't see a thing wrong with this idea. There's more the pity. Only dangerous radicals have problems with this kind of mass manipulation. People like me.

This is, my friends, exactly what national socialism and other brands of totalitarianism is about. This is what they do. Manufacture patriotism and brandish its symbols and slogans on any occasion and in any venue where it can reach thousands, nay, millions of spectators. Think military parades, military ads. military events like air shows, military open houses at bases and on ships, military aircraft flying over stadiums, military getting on planes first, being cheered in airports, etc., etc. All this, and they use your money to do it with. Your taxes are paying for these phony displays. Yes, in the NFL case this is five and a half million bucks that could be used for oh, fixing a school or a bridge or a highway. Or providing food to some American family down on its luck or . . . well, you get the idea. This is an outrage. This is a crime. This is thievery from the American taxpayer. That's what I think of it.But don't forget, I'll be among the first to be swept up when they send the heroes out armed to the teeth to purify American society.

(More than coincidental, I think, that my last blog post, way back in early January, was on this same theme.)

Soldier Worship

I totally agree with this piece from Salon by David Masciotra:

Put a man in uniform, preferably a white man, give him a gun, and Americans will worship him. It is a particularly childish trait, of a childlike culture, that insists on anointing all active military members and police officers as “heroes.” The rhetorical sloppiness and intellectual shallowness of affixing such a reverent label to everyone in the military or law enforcement betrays a frightening cultural streak of nationalism, chauvinism, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, but it also makes honest and serious conversations necessary for the maintenance and enhancement of a fragile democracy nearly impossible.

It has become impossible to go a week without reading a story about police brutality, abuse of power and misuse of authority. Michael Brown’s murder represents the tip of a body pile, and in just the past month, several videos have emerged of police assaulting people, including pregnant women, for reasons justifiable only to the insane.

It is equally challenging for anyone reasonable, and not drowning in the syrup of patriotic sentimentality, to stop saluting, and look at the servicemen of the American military with criticism and skepticism. There is a sexual assault epidemic in the military. In 2003, a Department of Defense study found that one-third of women seeking medical care in the VA system reported experiencing rape or sexual violence while in the military. Internal and external studies demonstrate that since the official study, numbers of sexual assaults within the military have only increased, especially with male victims. According to the Pentagon, 38 men are sexually assaulted every single day in the U.S. military. Given that rape and sexual assault are, traditionally, the most underreported crimes, the horrific statistics likely fail to capture the reality of the sexual dungeon that has become the United States military.

Chelsea Manning, now serving time in prison as a whistle-blower, uncovered multiple incidents of fellow soldiers laughing as they murdered civilians. Keith Gentry, a former Navy man, wrote that when he and his division were bored they preferred passing the time with the “entertainment” of YouTube videos capturing air raids of Iraq and Afghanistan, often making jokes and mocking the victims of American violence. If the murder of civilians, the rape of “brothers and sisters” on base, and the relegation of death and torture of strangers as fodder for amusement qualifies as heroism, the world needs better villains.

It is undeniable that there are police officers who heroically uphold their motto and mission to “serve and protect,” just as it is indisputable that there are members of the military who valiantly sacrifice themselves for the sake of others. Reviewing the research proving cruelty and mendacity within law enforcement and the military, and reading the stories of trauma and tragedy caused by officers and soldiers, does not mean that no cop or troop qualifies as a hero, but it certainly means that many of them are not heroes.

Acknowledging the spread of sadism across the ranks of military also does not mean that the U.S. government should neglect veterans, as they often do, by cutting their healthcare options, delaying or denying treatment, and reducing psychiatric services. On the contrary, if American politicians and pundits genuinely believed that American military members are “heroes,” they would not settle for sloganeering, and garish tributes. They would insist that veterans receive the best healthcare possible. Improving and universalizing high quality healthcare for all Americans, including veterans, is a much better and truer way to honor the risks soldiers and Marines accept on orders than unofficially imposing a juvenile and dictatorial rule over speech in which anything less than absolute and awed adulation for all things military is treasonous.

One of the reasons that the American public so eagerly and excitedly complies with the cultural code of lionizing every soldier and cop is because of the physical risk-taking and bravery many of them display on the foreign battleground and the American street. Physical strength and courage is only useful and laudable when invested in a cause that is noble and moral. The causes of American foreign policy, especially at the present, rarely qualify for either compliment. The “troops are heroes” boosters of American life typically toss out clichés to defend their generalization – “They defend our freedom,” “They fight so we don’t have to.”

No American freedom is currently at stake in Afghanistan. It is impossible to imagine an argument to the contrary, just as the war in Iraq was clearly fought for the interests of empire, the profits of defense contractors, and the edification of neoconservative theorists. It had nothing to do with the safety or freedom of the American people. The last time the U.S. military deployed to fight for the protection of American life was in World War II – an inconvenient fact that reduces clichés about “thanking a soldier” for free speech to rubble. If a soldier deserves gratitude, so does the litigator who argued key First Amendment cases in court, the legislators who voted for the protection of free speech, and thousands of external agitators who rallied for more speech rights, less censorship and broader access to media.

Wars that are not heroic have no real heroes, except for the people who oppose those wars. Far from being the heroes of recent wars, American troops are among their victims. No rational person can blame the soldier, the Marine, the airman, or the Navy man for the stupid and destructive foreign policy of the U.S. government, but calling them “heroes,” and settling for nothing less, makes honest and critical conversations about American foreign policy less likely to happen. If all troops are heroes, it doesn’t make much sense to call their mission unnecessary and unjust. It also makes conversations about the sexual assault epidemic, or the killing of innocent civilians, impossible. If all troops are heroes, it doesn’t make any sense to acknowledge that some are rapists and sadists.

The same principle of clear-eyed scrutiny applies to law enforcement agencies. Police departments everywhere need extensive investigation of their training methods, qualifications for getting on the job, and psychological evaluation. None of that will happen as long as the culture calls cops heroes, regardless of their behavior.
An understandable reason for calling all troops heroes, even on the left, is to honor the sacrifice they make after they die or endure a life-altering injury in one of America’s foolish acts of aggression. A more helpful and productive act of citizenship, and sign of solidarity with the military, is the enlistment in an antiwar movement that would prevent the government from using its volunteer Army as a plaything for the financial advancement and political cover of the state-corporate nexus and the military-industrial complex of Dwight Eishenhower’s nightmares.

Given the dubious and dangerous nature of American foreign policy, and the neglect and abuse veterans often suffer when returning home wounded or traumatized, Americans, especially those who oppose war, should do everything they can to discourage young, poor and working-class men and women from joining the military. Part of the campaign against enlistment requires removing the glory of the “hero” label from those who do enlist. Stanley Hauerwas, a professor of divinity studies at Duke whom Time called “America’s best theologian,” has suggested that, given the radical pacifism of Jesus Christ, American churches should do all they can to discourage its young congregants from joining the military. Haurwas’ brand of intellectual courage is necessary, even among non-Christians, to combat the hysterical sycophancy toward the military in a culture where even saluting a Marine, while holding a coffee cup, is tantamount to terrorism.

The men and women who do enlist deserve better than to die in the dirt and come home in a bag, or spend their lives in wheelchairs, and their parents should not have to drown in tears and suffer the heartbreak of burying their children. The catastrophes become less common when fewer people join the military.

Calling all cops and troops heroes insults those who actually are heroic – the soldier who runs into the line of fire to protect his division, the police officer who works tirelessly to find a missing child – by placing them alongside the cops who shoot unarmed teenagers who have their hands in the air, or the soldier who rapes his subordinate.

It also degrades the collective understanding of heroism to the fantasies of high-budget, cheap-story action movies. The American conception of heroism seems inextricably linked to violence; not yet graduated from third-grade games of cops and robbers. Explosions and smoking guns might make for entertaining television, but they are not necessary, and more and more in modern society, not even helpful in determining what makes a hero.

A social worker who commits to the care and advocacy of adults with developmental disabilities – helping them find employment, group home placement and medical care, and just treating them with love and kindness – is a hero. A hospice worker in a poor neighborhood, providing precious comfort and consolation to someone dying on the ugly edges of American healthcare, is a hero. An inner-city teacher, working hard to give essential education and meaningful affirmation to children living in neighborhoods where bullets fly and families fall apart, is a hero.

Not all teachers, hospice workers or social workers are heroes, but emphasizing the heroism of those who do commit to their clients, patients and students with love and service would cause a shift of America’s fundamental values. It would place the spotlight on tender and selfless acts of solidarity and empathy for the poor. Calling all cops heroes too often leads to pathetic deference to authority, even when the results are fatal, and insisting all members of the military are heroes too often reinforces the American values of militarism and exceptionalism.

The assignment of heroism, exactly like the literary construct, might have more to do with the assignment of villainy than the actual honoring of “heroes.” Every hero needs a villain. If the only heroes are armed men fighting the country’s wars on drugs and wars in the Middle East, America’s only villains are criminals and terrorists. If servants of the poor, sick and oppressed are the heroes, then the villains are those who oppress, profit from inequality and poverty, and neglect the sick. If that is the real battle of heroism versus villainy, everyone is implicated, and everyone has a far greater role than repeating slogans, tying ribbons and placing stickers on bumpers.

David Masciotra is the author of Mellencamp: American Troubadour (forthcoming, University Press of Kentucky). He writes regularly for the Daily Beast and Splice Today. For more information visit www.davidmasciotra.com.

Bush Trifecta

As in the vile little pretender who occupied the White House from 2000-2008. That Bush. And the trifecta being Afghanistan, Iraq, and Gaza. All of which are coming unglued and are being convulsed by violence--except maybe Afghanistan which is on the brink of being convulsed by violence on account of a disputed election for president which is ongoing. As we speak, Hamas is firing rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip and the Israelis are responding with their usual air strikes in retaliation. I don't need to remind you how both of Bush's wars to bring democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq have fared. Iraq is alight as parts of it and Syria are now being claimed as the caliphate proclaimed by Islamic jihadists so violent and extreme that even al qaeda spurns them. And yet we never hear anybody raging against Bush and the consummate folly that has brought us to this pass.

See this piece by Juan Cole for gory details on what a massive fuck-up U.S. policy in the Middle East has been for the past 15 years. The whole area is imploding . . . do you entertain any thought whatsoever that this would be going on had the U.S. military not been there during that time?

Fourth of July Worship Service

Fenway patriots holding up the monstrous flag over the Green Monster in left

This is what Chris Hedges called his visit to Fenway Park in his latest piece in Truthdig. Subtitled "Kneeling in Fenway Park to the Gods of War," Hedges states plainly what any thinking person has noticed about big-time sports in America. All of them, without exception worship at the shrine of Mars. They never miss an opportunity to trumpet their love for the country and especially the "heroes" in uniform who fight the nation's wars. Here's part of what he wrote:

The religious reverie—repeated in sports arenas throughout the United States—is used to justify our bloated war budget and endless wars. Schools and libraries are closing. Unemployment and underemployment are chronic. Our infrastructure is broken and decrepit. And we will have paid a crippling $4 trillion for the useless and futile wars we waged over the last 13 years in the Middle East. But the military remains as unassailable as Jesus, or, among those who have season tickets at Fenway Park, the Red Sox. The military is the repository of our honor and patriotism. No public official dares criticize the armed forces or challenge their divine right to more than half of all the nation’s discretionary spending. And although we may be distrustful of government, the military—in the twisted logic of the American mind—is somehow separate.

 Precisely. I was talking not long ago to a woman who is progressive in every other aspect of things that I've had occasion to discuss with her, except for the military. She could advance no good reason for not wanting to halve the defense budget. Indeed, she was just vague. There are a lot of bad people in the world, she says. As if that's a reason for bleeding our very sustenance into the military machine that is as rapcious as it is monstrous.

It's an unholy marriage, this coupling of American sports with the manic embrace of all things military. I've thought for a long time that bodes badly for our future. A people mindlessly embracing everything "patriotic" are ripe for exploitation by the most reactionary forces in our society.

Look What $1 Trillion Will Buy

Did you know that the president's 2015 budget request for all national security-related programs amounts to over $1 trillion? Yes, you are reading that correctly. It's not a misprint. Before going any further, just mull that number for a moment. Do you know how many starving people that could feed for two or three years? how many schools, bridges, highways, water treatment plants, wind and solar farms, light rail systems, and on and on could be built with this amount of money? But what are we going to buy with this? We're going to buy so-called "national security."

I'm not even going to go into my usual rant about how much of this is wasted, pissed away every year on everything from boondoggles for the brass, to unneeded weapons systems, to recruiting advertising, to special forces operators in roughly 175 countries in the world, to 12 battle carrier groups for the Navy, and so forth, etc., etc., etc. No, this time I'm going to just bewail how huge the number is. Monstrous in every way.

The military's friends and shills in Congress are whining that even this outrageous budget is not enough. Don't forget that the Republicans managed to exempt the DoD from the crippling budget sequester that every other department of government is bearing.

Read this piece "An Inadequate Defense Budget? Compared to Whom? Compared to When?" You know the answers to the questions . . . but it's laid out pretty neatly here.

The relationship of US defense spending to that of presumed threat nations and the girth of contemporary defense spending compared to a time of greater threat does not call into question the adequacy of the size of today's US defense budget; it calls into question the competence of current US political and military leadership, both in the Pentagon and in Congress.

SOF

This article in "Tom Dispatch" will give you just the slightest taste of what's going on with our special operations forces. And I can tell you, although you might be shocked by its revelations, the truth of matter is far worse. It's SOF's business to be secretive, and if they are being queried about what they do, they will not tell the truth. Period. So you can take the numbers in this piece with a grain of salt. They are higher. I was in SOCOM after 9/11. I witnessed the vast infusion of money and troops that followed. And I felt the surge of excitement and blood-lust through the place when all of a sudden a numerous, cunning, omnipresent, always-dangerous and ruthless enemy--Muslim terrorists--was out there to stalk and kill for the foreseeable future. The so-called "war on terror" was the best thing since flush toilets as far as SOCOM was concerned. I thought it was ludicrous, but mine was a distinctly minority opinion.

I worked for these people, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) with its thousands of special operations forces (SOF). For a long time, 13 years. Talk about a square peg in a round hole! That's what I was. For deep down, way deep--because to be open about what I really thought would have been insane, under the circumstances--I really despised what was going on around me there, and the tiny part I played in advancing the mission of the organization. Although I take great pains and am prompt to declare that the individuals I met and worked with were for the most part upstanding, outstanding, honorable, dedicated people. And they were smart people, too. SOF is the cream of the crop. But I thought they were in the grip of mass delusion. But for very few I met there, they were all flaming flag-waving "patriots," which is to say they didn't question the foreign policy of the country, they didn't question any of the missions they were given, or the cost of what they were doing, or the secrecy in which everything was cloaked, the blood-curdling mystique which they embraced. They were (naturally) knee-jerk Republicans of the most conservative kind. Me, with my shaggy hair, decidedly un-SOF-like physique, and Democratic politics . . . well, I was looked upon as some sort of curio. I thought of myself as a token liberal that was allowed to inhabit their headquarters dwelling, sort of like you allow stray dog or cat to hang around. I was not sorry to leave there. I don't miss it.

Closing Out

In a few hours it'll be 2014. Used to be I looked forward with at least some anticipation to the coming year. Can't say that I do anymore. Mainly, I think, because I don't really see a way out of the spiral of worsening mediocrity the country is in. Some examples that I've gleaned from an article recently in truthout. It chronicles the "Are You Serious?" Awards for 2013. These are global awards. I'm just citing some U.S. samples:

Creative Solutions Award to the Third Battalion of the 41^st U.S. Infantry Division for its innovative solution on how to halt sporadic attacks by the Taliban in Afghanistan’s Zhare District: it blew up a hill that the insurgents used as cover.

This tactic could potentially be a major job creator because there are lots of hills in Afghanistan. And after the U.S. Army blows them all up, it can take on those really big things: mountains.

Runner up in this category is Col. Thomas W. Collins, for his inventive solution on how to explain a sharp rise in Taliban attacks in 2013. The U.S. military published a detailed bar graphs indicating insurgent attacks had declined by 7 percent, but, when the figure was challenged by the media, the Army switched to the mushroom strategy (i.e., kept in the dark and fed manure): “We’re just not giving out statistics anymore,” Col. Collins told the Associated Press.

Independent sources indicate that attacks were up 40 percent over last year, with the battlegrounds shifting from the south of Afghanistan to the east and north.

 The White Man’s Burden Award goes to retired U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, former commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and an expert on counterinsurgency warfare. McChrystal told the Associated Press that the Afghans don’t really want the U.S. to withdraw, because they are “Like a teenager, you really don’t want your parents hanging around you, but…you like to know if things go bad, they’re going to help.” The General went on to say the U.S. needed to stay because “We have an emotional responsibility” to the Afghans.

The Broad Side of the Barn Award to the Obama administration for spending an extra $1 billion to expand the $34 billion U.S. anti-ballistic missile system (ABM) in spite of the fact that the thing can’t hit, well, the broad side of a barn. The last test of the ABM was in July, when, according to the Pentagon, “An intercept was not achieved.” No surprise there. The ABM hasn’t hit a target since 2008.

The $1 billion will be used to add 14 interceptors to the 30 already deployed in Alaska and California.

The Golden Lemon Award once again goes to Lockheed Martin (with a tip of the hat to sub-contractors Northrop Grumman, BAE, L-3 Communications, United Technologies Corp., and Honeywell) for “shoddy” work on the F-35 stealth fighter, the most expensive weapons system in U.S. History. The plane—already 10 years behind schedule and 100 percent over budget—has vacuumed up $395.7 billion, and will eventually cost $1.5 trillion.

A Pentagon study, according to Agence France Presse, “cited 363 problems in the design and manufacture of the costly Joint Strike Fighter, the hi-tech warplane that is supposed to serve as the backbone of the future American fleet.”

The plane has difficulty performing at night or in bad weather, and is plagued with a faulty oxygen supply system, fuselage cracks and unexplained “hot spots.” Its software is also a problem, in part because it is largely untested. “Without adequate product evaluation of mission system software,” the Pentagon found, “Lockheed Martin cannot ensure aircraft safety requirements are met.”

The Right Article

It was one of those "whoopee" moments when I ran across this article, entitled "Stop Thanking the Troops for Me: No, They Don't Protect Our Freedoms." It was in Salon by a guy named Justin Doolittle. I could not have said it better myself. This is what I've been trying to convey for several years, and several times in this forum. The fact that I find the virtual deification of the military and all its works as repulsive. I've had people tell me "thank you for your service" when they found out I was a veteran, and although I have been tempted, I've never responded the way I really would if I were to tell the truth. And that would be something along the lines of:

"Don't thank me for anything. I was in the military because I had to be. Because the military was drafting everybody in sight in the mid-1960s and sending them over to Vietnam to get shot up, maimed, killed, gassed, and have their minds totally screwed up all in the name of freedom. I didn't believe it then, and I believe it even less today."

But of course I don't say this. These people mean well, I suppose. They've been trained by the propaganda machine of the empire that our military is responsible for keeping us all free, safe, and able to consume to our hearts' content.

The article is well worth reading in toto. But for those of you with limited time, I'll digest it for you.

• The “freedoms” most Americans think of when they hear the term are enshrined in constitutional and statutory law. They are in no way dependent on the size, scope or even the existence of the U.S. military.
• This widely held belief, that our freedom is bestowed on us by soldiers, has obvious implications for how the public views the military. One such implication of the ubiquity of this myth is that people will feel they owe boundless gratitude to the military as an institution and all the men and women who serve in it.  
• The undercurrent of all this is that “support” and “gratitude” for the military and those who serve in it is intrinsically apolitical. It’s just something that all decent Americans understand and respect. This approach serves a very important purpose, which is to further blur the lines between patriotism and support for the military. Americans of conscience who do not “support” the troops, particularly those who volunteer to fight in wars of aggression, are not allowed a seat at the table in this paradigm. . . . Supporting the military, though, and expressing gratitude for what the military is actually doing around the world, are nothing if not explicitly political sentiments. To suggest otherwise is fundamentally dishonest. It reduces sincere dissent on these matters of such tremendous consequence to our culture and our politics to nothingness.
• The combination of unanimous, entirely uncritical appreciation for the military, and the irrational belief that we owe gratitude to the troops for virtually everything we cherish in life, up to and including freedom itself, is very dangerous for our intellectual culture. It stifles any potential for rational, coherent discussion on these matters. It makes us, free citizens of a constitutional society, meek and excessively obeisant.
• We need not thank the troops for every breath we take. When we do, we reduce our entire existence as free people to something that only exists at the whim of the U.S. military, and suffocate critical thought about the military and what it’s actually doing in the world. 

Captain America

Susan I saw a pretty good movie this afternoon – "Captain Phillips." If you keep up with movies in the least, if probably seen reviews of this one, about a huge American cargo ship being seized by four heavily armed Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. Movie is based on a true story that happened in 2009. It's really a tense film, and the anxiety you feel for the crew and the dread about what is going to happen keeps building. After some pretty tense times on the boat, the American military arrives with its awesome might, and you know how this story is going to end.

In the hallway after the movie, one of the ladies who accompanied Susan said "Thank God for the SEALS." That's what she got out of it, one supposes. How did she miss the desperation of these pirates, the desperate homeland they come from, the desperate straits they were in under the thumb of cruel vicious warlords? The humanity of these four guys, even though they were pirates? The last emotions that I felt coming out of the movie were elation that we have SEALs who can go kill guys on the high seas all in a days work, and destroyers and aircraft carriers, and high tech everything. Go see the movie. See what you think.

Gods of Olympus Taste a Little Bit of Earth

So there they were all arrayed in their tin soldier finest regalia. Beribboned like Christmas presents, or rather I should say, like M&M and Ju Jubes graffiti, stapled to their manly chests, their dutiful, worshipful minions arrayed behind them in the first row at the Senate armed services committee hearing on sexual assault in the military. The committee in general was not buying the united front from the service bosses that they were going to make this issue priority one, etc., etc. What a treat to see women senators McCaskell of Missouri and Gillibrand of New York give these guys the ass-chewing they so richly deserve. (I could not help but think how our "heroes" in uniform will privately vilify in the vilest way possible these two women. I remember real well what they had to say--and probably still do--about Hillary.) All you have to do is imagine them in the same shoes as the service women who have the courage to report sexual assault and what happens to them. We know what happens. They get persecuted by the chain of command and other members of their unit. I suppose the prevailing ethos is that if you get raped, just "suck it up." Only it will be worse for the ladies of the Senate who have the temerity to dress down the uniformed gods of Olympus and who are attempting to get commanders out of the business of shielding sexual predators in the ranks.

And how I hope they succeed. I'm not really expecting that they will, though. The military is going to get its way, it always does.

Related articles

• Military leaders defend commanders' role in sexual abuse cases (guardian.co.uk)
• More women in the Senate equals more pressure on the military to fix its sexual assault problem (dailykos.com)

The Honored Dead . . . Just as Dead

Today is Memorial Day. When I was young, it never was much a big deal. Traditionally it was regarded as the beginning of summer. It got to be a bigger deal for me when I worked for the Fed because it was always attached to a three-day weekend. Lately, however, Memorial Day has become somewhat of a media carnival. No news report today is complete without shots of the president laying a wreath or some other important personage giving a speech, and virtually everybody talking about the "ultimate sacrifice" that past "heroes" made for our "freedoms."

Of course, one would come off as a despicable clod to give voice to other takes on this holiday, at least if one disturbed the universal public adulation of the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed from our wars. And of course, the adulation for all of those veterans of military service (of which I am one) for their "service." In point of fact, back in my day, back in my generation's war, Vietnam, "service" was not always voluntary. People got called to military service because they weren't rich enough or lucky enough to avoid it. Now of course, we have done away with the draft, and our "heroes" are all volunteers not rich enough or lucky enough to avoid "service" to their country. And, our country still sends these young people, women now constitutionally included, off to get killed, maimed, ruined for life in their heads, some of them, to fight wars against whatever current bogeyman the national government has decided requires chastisement in the name of liberty and freedom and, let's not forget, national security.

Forgive me if I'm a skeptic about Memorial Day. The United States, of course, is participating in and perpetuating an ages old charade: that war is honorable, and that to die in one for "one's country" is one of the most moral and notable things a person can do. No one, except me and a few others, considers these people victims, not heroes. Victims to avarice, cruelty, and madness. For what has war ever solved? What has war ever produced, except the "reason" for the next war? Every age, every country, follows the same script. It glorifies war dead, because to do otherwise would be insensitive, inhuman, cruel to the survivors, and disrespectful of the dead. I just think we ought to be aware that we never stop digging graves for war dead, that were never stop maiming our youth in the name of patriotism and "freedom". And it's always going to be a tragedy, crime, not something to be celebrated and mythologized.

Down the Road

Susan and I drove down to Lawton, OK, today. It's just down the road from us about 90 minutes to the southwest. I must say Lawton is one of the true hell holes of this state. How can it not be when it's in the broiling southwest and is the site of Fort Sill, a huge army base that's home for the the headquarters of Army artillery school? They teach guys how to shoot the big guns there. OK, so you know army bases are real good for crime, pawn shops, strip joints, and cheap bars, right? And when the base is huge, you get a lot of these things. Plus you have a large retired population that kinda just stays around the last place they were stationed. Only in some kind of alternate universe would I consider such a locale to be desirable, but in the alternate universe we already inhabit, this is considered a great thing to have one of these horrors located in your town. Why? Well, jobs and money! What other unalloyed goods do we have in this world?

We went to visit an old friend, Fr. Joe Ross, who is pastor at Blessed Sacrament Church in Lawton right there at Gore Ave and N 7th Street. Poor Joe has got Parkinson's Disease, and he looked like hell to me. He's my age, 69, and he says he's just hanging on taking ideas about retirement "one year at a time." He likes what he does, pastoring, but it's getting harder for him to keep up with. Joe and I and Susan spent a lot time together during our first stay in Oklahoma, and he was always funny, well informed, generous, and vital. He's all of these still, except he labors under the burden of the huge handicap this disease gives you. It really made me sad to see. You always promise when you part after such visits that you will do it again, but you always wonder if maybe that's the last time you're going to see somebody. I don't expect this will the case here, but one of things they don't tell you about getting old is you have to bear the burden of watching people you love age too.

Related articles

• Eating Peppers Tied to Lower Parkinson's Risk, Study Finds (news.health.com)
  

Here's What We're Up Against, Folks

Normally I don't give stuff like what follows the time of day, but in this case I'll make an exception. My mailbox gets defiled every now and again by such stuff, but thankfully not too often. What follows is from what is described as "A USMC vet." Like that is immediately supposed to impress me with this dude's sagacity. In fact, it has the opposite effect because it tempts me to simply drop my USMC stereotype in place and expect just exactly what I get here: flag-waving blather with not an ounce of true information to sustain it. I know for a fact that all marine vets aren't like this, but I fear many are. And many more agree even though they never spent an hour in uniform. It just depresses the hell out of me to realize that this pinhead represents literally millions of others in this country who actually believe this nonsense.

It's not worth a single moment of my time to go about refuting the "arguments" presented in this screed. But I will make several observations. And forgive me if the observations seem too jejune and obvious to make at all. It's just therapy for me to do this. These thoughts are in no particular order.

• The "American Dream", if ever there was one, has been gone for a long time. It did not just end for the poor and middling folk of the US when Obama was reelected.
• "Norman Rockwell's America" is a figment of the imagination. It never existed.
• This piece is suffused with the terrifying racism that still exists in this country well into the 21st century. It's crude and it's scary. And truth be told, the hatred of Barack Obama that we see and hear every day and that's so evident in this piece is at its fundamental roots because the man is black.
• Want a litany of those who are responsible for all the problems? Read paragraph 2 carefully. You're probably on the list.
• Since when are marines not government workers?
• This guy knows nothing about rules of capitalization, except what maybe he learned as a Marine, and of course, they don't know the rules either. "Militarese" and "federalese" are among the most abominable crimes committed on the English language. I know. I spent my entire working life reading it.
• The best two words in the whole piece are the last two.

The American Dream ended (on November 6th) in Ohio. The second term of Barack Obama will be the final nail in the coffin for the legacy of the white Christian males who discovered, explored, pioneered, settled and developed the greatest Republic in the history of mankind.
 A coalition of Blacks, Latinos, Feminists, Gays, Government Workers, Union Members,  Environmental Extremists, The Media, Hollywood, uninformed young people, the "forever needy, on disabiliy", the chronically unemployed, illegal aliens and other "fellow travelers" have ended Norman Rockwell's America.
The Cocker Spaniel is off the front porch...the Pit Bull is in the back yard.
The American Constitution has been replaced with Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and Chicago shyster David Axelrod, along with international Socialist George Soros will be pulling the strings on their beige puppet to bring us Act 2 of the New World Order.

Our side ran two candidates who couldn't even win their own home states, and the circus fattster Chris Christie helped Obama over the top with a glowing "post Sandy" tribute that elevated the "Commander-in-Chief" to Mother Teresa status.
People like me are completely politically irrelevant, and I will never again comment on or concern myself with the aforementioned coalition which has surrendered our culture, our heritage and our traditions without a shot being fired.
You will never again out vote these people. It will take individual acts of defiance and massive displays of civil disobedience to get back the rights we have allowed them to take away. It will take Zealots, not moderates--not reach-across-the-aisle RINOs [Republicans in name only] to right this ship and restore our beloved country to its former status.
Those who come after us will have to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to bring back the Republic that this generation has timidly frittered away due to "white guilt" and political correctness.....
I'm done.

Homeland Security II

This article will have you steaming. I promise you. When you think for just a second or two of all the uses for real needs the money we've poured into this boondoggle could have bought . . . well, it's nothing less than criminal in my opinion. This piece is contained in its entirety in the Tomgram article I mentioned yesterday.

“Homeland Security”
The Trillion-Dollar Concept That No One Can Define
By Mattea Kramer and Chris Hellman

Imagine a labyrinthine government department so bloated that few have any clear idea of just what its countless pieces do.  Imagine that tens of billions of tax dollars are disappearing into it annually, black hole-style, since it can’t pass a congressionally mandated audit.
Now, imagine that there are two such departments, both gigantic, and you’re beginning to grasp the new, twenty-first century American security paradigm.

For decades, the Department of Defense has met this definition to a T.  Since 2003, however, it hasn’t been alone.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which celebrates its 10th birthday this March, has grown into a miniature Pentagon. It’s supposed to be the actual “defense” department -- since the Pentagon is essentially a Department of Offense -- and it’s rife with all the same issues and defects that critics of the military-industrial complex have decried for decades.  In other words, “homeland security” has become another obese boondoggle.

But here’s the strange thing: unlike the Pentagon, this monstrosity draws no attention whatsoever -- even though, by our calculations, this country has spent a jaw-dropping $791 billion on “homeland security” since 9/11. To give you a sense of just how big that is, Washington spent an inflation-adjusted $500 billion on the entire New Deal.

Despite sucking up a sum of money that could have rebuilt crumbling infrastructure from coast to coast, this new agency and the very concept of “homeland security” have largely flown beneath the media radar -- with disastrous results.

And that’s really no surprise, given how the DHS came into existence.

A few months before 9/11, Congress issued a national security report acknowledging that U.S. defense policy had not evolved to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.  The report recommended a “national homeland security agency” with a single leader to oversee homeland security-style initiatives across the full range of the federal government.  Although the report warned that a terrorist attack could take place on American soil, it collected dust.

Then the attack came, and lawmakers of both political parties and the American public wanted swift, decisive action.  President George W. Bush's top officials and advisers saw in 9/11 their main chance to knock off Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and establish a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East.  Others, who generally called themselves champions of small government, saw an opportunity to expand big government at home by increasing security spending.

Their decision to combine domestic security under one agency turned out to be like sending the Titanic into the nearest field of icebergs.

President Bush first created an Office of Homeland Security in the White House and then, with the Homeland Security Act of 2002, laid plans for a new executive department. The DHS was funded with billions of dollars and staffed with 180,000 federal employees when it opened for business on March 1, 2003.  It qualified as the largest reorganization of the federal government since 1947 when, fittingly, the Department of Defense was established.

Announcing plans for this new branch of government, President Bush made a little-known declaration of “mission accomplished” that long preceded that infamous banner strung up on an aircraft carrier to celebrate his “victory” in Iraq.  In November 2002, he said, “The continuing threat of terrorism, the threat of mass murder on our own soil, will be met with a unified, effective response.”

Mission unaccomplished (big time).
A decade later, a close look at the hodge-podge of homeland security programs that now spans the U.S. government reveals that there’s nothing “unified” about it.  Not all homeland security programs are managed through the Department of Homeland Security, nor are all programs at the Department of Homeland Security related to securing the homeland.

Federal officials created the DHS by pulling together 22 existing government departments, including stand-alone agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, better known by its acronym FEMA, and the Coast Guard, which came with programs both related and unrelated to counterterrorism.  They also brought into the DHS a host of programs that had previously existed as parts of other agencies like the Nuclear Incident Response Team from the Department of Energy and the Transportation Security Administration at the Department of Transportation.  To knit these disparate parts together, officials built a mammoth bureaucracy over an already existing set of bureaucracies.  At the same time, they left a host of counterterrorism programs scattered across the rest of the federal government, which means, a decade later, many activities at the DHS are duplicated by similar programs elsewhere.

A trail of breadcrumbs in federal budget documents shows how much is spent on homeland security and by which agencies, though details about what that money is buying are scarce.  The DHS budget was $60 billion last year.  However, only $35 billion was designated for counterterrorism programs of various sorts.  In the meantime, total federal funding for (small-h, small-s) homeland security was $68 billion -- a number that, in addition to the DHS money, includes $17 billion for the Department of Defense, plus around $4 billion each for the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services, with the last few billion scattered across virtually every other federal agency in existence.

From the time this new security bureaucracy rumbled into operation, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Washington’s internal watchdog, called the DHS a “high risk” proposition.  And it’s never changed its tune. Regular GAO reports scrutinize the department and identify major problems.  In March of last year, for instance, one GAO report noted that the office had recommended a total of 1,600 changes.  At that time, the department had only “addressed about half of them” -- and addressed doesn’t necessarily mean solved.

So rest assured, in the best of all possible homeland security worlds, there are only 800-odd issues outstanding, according to the government’s own watchdog, after we as a nation poured $791 billion down the homeland security rabbit hole.  Indeed, there remain gaping problems in the very areas that the DHS is supposedly securing on our behalf:

* Consider port security: you wouldn’t have much trouble overnighting a weapon of mass destruction into the United States.  Cargo terminals are the entry point for containers from all over the world, and a series of reports have found myriad vulnerabilities -- including gaps in screening for nuclear and radiological materials.  After spending $200 million on new screening technology, the DHS determined it wouldn’t deliver sufficient improvements and cancelled the program (but not the cost to you, the taxpayer).

* Then there are the problems of screening people crossing into this country.  The lion’s share of responsibility for border security lies with part of the DHS, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which had an $11.7 billion budget in fiscal 2012.  But in the land of utter duplication that is Washington’s version of counterterrorism, there is also something called the Border Security Program at the State Department, with a separate pot of funding to the tune of $2.2 billion last year.  The jury’s out on whether these programs are faintly doing their jobs, even as they themselves define them.  As with so many other DHS programs, the one thing they are doing successfully is closing and locking down what was once considered an “open” society.

* For around $14 billion each year, the Department of Homeland Security handles disaster response and recovery through FEMA, something that’s meant to encompass preparedness for man-made as well as natural disasters. But a 2012 investigation by the GAO found that FEMA employs an outdated method of assessing a disaster-struck region’s ability to respond and recover without federal intervention -- helpfully, that report came out just a month before Hurricane Sandy.

* Recently, it came to light that the DHS had spent $431 million on a radio system for communication within the department -- but only one of more than 400 employees questioned about the system claimed to have the slightest idea how to use it.  It’s never surprising to hear that officials at separate agencies have trouble coordinating, but this was an indication that, even within the DHS, employees struggle with the basics of communication.

* In a survey that covered all federal departments, DHS employees reported rock-bottom levels of engagement with their work.  Its own workers called the DHS the worst federal agency to work for.
Those are just a few of a multitude of glaring problems inside the now decade-old department. Because homeland security is not confined to one agency, however, rest assured that neither is its bungling:

* There is, for instance, that $17 billion in homeland security funding at the Department of Defense -- a mountain of cash for defending against terrorist attacks, protecting U.S. airspace, and providing security at military bases. But perhaps defense officials feel that $17 billion is insufficient, since an October 2012 report by the GAO found the Pentagon had outdated and incomplete plans for responding to a domestic attack, including confusion about the chain of command should such an event take place.  That should be no surprise, though: the Pentagon is so replete with oversight problems and obsolete, astronomically expensive programs that it makes the DHS look like a trim, well-oiled machine.

* Or consider the domestic counterterrorism unit at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), which enjoyed $461 million in homeland security funding last year and is housed not at the DHS or the Pentagon but at the Department of Justice.  ATF made headlines for giving marked firearms to Mexican smugglers and losing track of them -- and then finding that the weapons were used in heinous crimes. More recently, in the wake of the Newtown massacre, ATF has drawn attention because it fails one of the most obvious tests of oversight and responsibility: it lacks a confirmed director at the helm of its operations. (According to The Hill newspaper, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) is currently holding up President Obama’s appointment to head the agency.)

Washington has poured staggering billions into securing the so-called homeland, but in so many of the areas meant to be secured there remain glaring holes the size of that gaping wound in the Titanic’s side.  And yet over the past decade -- even with these problems -- terrorist attacks on the homeland have scarcely hurt a soul.  That may offer a clue into just how misplaced the very notion of the Department of Homeland Security was in the first place.  In the wake of 9/11, pouring tiny percentages of that DHS money into less flashy safety issues, from death by food to death by gun to death by car, to mention just three, might have made Americans genuinely safer at, by comparison, minimal cost.

Perhaps the strangest part of homeland security operations may be this: there is no agreed-upon definition for just what homeland security is. The funds Washington has poured into the concept will soon enough approach a trillion dollars and yet it’s a concept with no clear boundaries that no one can agree on.  Worse yet, few are asking the hard questions about what security we actually need or how best to achieve it.  Instead, Washington has built a sprawling bureaucracy riddled with problems and set it on autopilot.

And that brings us to today. Budget cuts are in the pipeline for most federal programs, but many lawmakers vocally oppose any reductions in security funding. What’s painfully clear is this: the mere fact that a program is given the label of national or homeland security does not mean that its downsizing would compromise American safety. Overwhelming evidence of waste, duplication, and poor management suggests that Washington could spend far less on security, target it better, and be so much safer.

Meanwhile, the same report that warned in early 2001 of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil also recommended redoubling funding for education in science and technology.

In the current budget-cutting fever, the urge to protect boundless funding for national security programs by dismantling investment essential to this country’s greatness -- including world-class education and infrastructure systems -- is bound to be powerful.  So whenever you hear the phrase “homeland security,” watch out: your long-term safety may be at risk.

Mattea Kramer is research director at National Priorities Project, where Chris Hellman is senior research analyst. Both are TomDispatch regulars.  They co-authored the book A People’s Guide to the Federal Budget.

A Whiff of Homeland

Have you ever wondered about the term "homeland security"? Has it ever bothered you? Does it have about it the strong odor of something not quite American? I've felt that way ever since I first heard the phrase in the fevered aftermath of 9/11 when Bush was calling for Arab scalps. Homeland security: it always sounded to my ears like a fascist thing. I recall the newsreels of Hitler frothing about the "Faterland" and the sea of Nazi salutes from the frenzied crowds. And the sound landscape of thousand upon thousands of "Heils!!" This is what "homeland" reminded me of. And I cannot help but think this specific term was conjured up with just the whiff of militarism intentionally there. It was no spur of the moment decision to graft this word into our everyday language, where, we should note, it is comfortably ensconced. It's not going away.

This was never the "homeland," was it? It was my country. Your country. Or in rare instances, "my nation." But "homeland"? Nope. That was never heard.

Crowd control

Not until we began morphing into the police state that we are fast turning into. Have you taken a gander lately at what the police are wearing just about anywhere for their duties that involve something more than directing traffic or raising flags or patrolling around catching speeders or harassing male black kids under the age of 20? I'm talking the so-called "tactical police units" or the cops when they're on any kind of crowd control posture. They remind me first, of military units: they look like them and they are armed like them. And second, it doesn't take too much imagination to see these formations like the minions of Darth Vader in Star Wars. Always menacing in their body armor and anonymity.

But whose worried about this? Nobody. The American people seem perfectly happy to be living in a place where the threat of mobilized police that are essentially paramilitary units stationed in every U.S. city of any size whatever.

I'm not alone in worrying about this homeland stuff. See Tom's Dispatch from a few days ago.

Socialism at the Gates!

Well, so how's this relaxed relaxed blog schedule working out for you? It's working out too good for me because now I've got the excuse for mental indolence that says: what are you worried about? You told everybody you were cutting back on the pace of your blog entries, and that's exactly what you're doing. But, comes the rejoinder from the angel on the other shoulder, you said you would be writing every three or four days, or something close to that, maybe even three or four times a week. You see, says the devil from the initial shoulder, you can't even remember what it was you said, so how can it be important?

Of course, in the larger scheme of things, it's not important at all. But then "the larger scheme of things" is itself a nebulous and slippery concept. Does it apply personally? Just to me? Or is it considerably larger, encompassing the entire country, perhaps? Or even larger than that . . . the entire globe? It matters a great deal how one thinks about "the larger scheme of things." It's pretty difficult, for example, to get concerned about guns or global warming if your larger scheme encompasses only yourself, your friends, your family, your interests. Which is what bothers me about some of the reaction to President Obama's second inaugural address yesterday. You would think the man called for the immediate seizure of all the means of production by the forces of state centralism. Innumerable pundits and assorted other observers (that would be people like me and those who chose to blog even more frequently) have observed that Obama's speech was the "most liberal" he ever gave. Well, let's not go crazy.

What we heard was an elevated defense of the role of government in the progress of the American people. (Maybe that's why it's also called a "progressive" point of view.) What was so "liberal" about what the man said? Well, let me suggest that what's got some people's briefs in a bunch is a couple of things. First, Obama's stout defense of the social programs that constitute the social safety net for this country: social security, medicare, and medicaid. As if these programs were some radical departure from what civilized societies all over the world have enacted. It's difficult to believe, but there are apparently millions of people who stand quite ready to gut these programs and the people for whom they are truly vital be damned (one presumes). As far as I'm concerned, these programs aren't even up for discussion as long as we have a military establishment that spends more than the next 20 or 30 military establishments in the world.

And then he uttered those utterly shocking sentiments about global warming. To the effect that he was going to address the problem despite those who disputed the "overwhelming" opinion of science. One has to wonder what it is going to take before people come to the realization that this problem is real and that we simply cannot mess around with it anymore. I've already read and heard scientists opine that it's already too late for us, that in our folly we've set ourselves on the path to extinction by our refusal to take seriously the warning signs the earth has been giving us for decades. And what the wise among us have been warning about.

So I suppose we're all about to be inundated by a tidal wave of liberalism. Really? Don't make me laugh. Obama is still committed to endless American military interventions abroad; he is going to do nothing about the banking mafia. Exploitative capitalism is still quite safe, thank you.

But how they hate him. And how they hate the idea that they must endure four more years of him. Even though they have nothing to worry about.

Myriad Dark Lies

I was going to call it some play on "Zero Dark Thirty," because my original intent was to discuss this flick which apparently has the critics swooning from coast to to coast. I had read a long critique of the movie by Glenn Greenwald, which I forwarded to several people. But then I read this piece by Matt Taibbi about the great bailout of 2008 and realized I could not confine my remarks to simply one set of government lies. Hence the rather clunky title which still attempts to play on the movie title, but only not so well.

So the subject is government falsehoods. Plural. Because they never cease. They are the currency of government.Without them, the government doesn't function. And for certain the military/industrial/intelligence nexus breaks down completely. Greenwald makes two main points his piece. First, the movie depicts torture as being instrumental in the discovery of the courier who in turn led the CIA to bin Laden. This is totally incorrect. Which is not to say the CIA doesn't use torture. Oh, no, that's not the point. It's just that they didn't use torture in this particular case to achieve their objectives. So Greenwald objects to the inclusion of torture in the movie. All of the explanations by the movie people, including the celebrated female director, boil down basically to: hey, it's a movie, not a documentary. Greenwald's second point is more telling from my point of view. He indicates the extraordinary level of cooperation the movie makers got from the US government. The point being: "all the better to foist the flag-waving propaganda on the people." Who, like the vast majority of the critics, are going to just swoon in patriotic abandon at this depiction of bare-chested, bare-knuckled American get-um. Only the movie-going public is far less informed and sophisticated than the writers. Which is also something the Pentagon and CIA know . . . This movie is going to seal in people's minds a false accounting of the killing of Osama bin Laden, and they are going to be perfectly fine with it, in fact gloriously happy that we killed the guy by doing whatever was necessary. Greenwald senses great danger in the smooching and petting going on between the CIA and Hollywood. It's every bit as insidious and dangerous as embedding journalists with military units as a way of controlling news. Probably even worse. But nobody cares.

The pigs are definitely winning

 Nor do they give much of a crap about the torrent of lies pouring out of Washington about the bank bailout. And that have been pouring out since the program was established four years ago. You thought that was old news, eh? Well, Matt Taibbi's piece in Rolling Stone eill disabuse you of the notion that the bailout worked, that it was conducted smartly by the government, that we were told the truth about any of it, that it fixed anything at all, that it was in the slightest way putative on the big banks, and probably most important of all, that everything is going to be fine. In fact, the country now stands at great risk than before of some sort of disastrous financial cataclysm for the very same reason as before: to wit, staggeringly risky investments by the too-big-to-fail banks.

Both of these articles are fairly lengthy, but this in no way detracts from their importance and timeliness. Neither of them is going to make you happy. Both are likely to do just the opposite, plus make you mad. But read 'em anyway. You owe it to yourself to find out about what's really going on. Not being duped and used by the forces of darkness is its own reward. 

Tramp, Tramp, Tramp

Following up on yesterday's lament about the gargantuan amount of our national treasure we're giving to the U.S. military establishment, consider this: The U.S. war department [I have decided I am no longer going to refer to these people as the Department of Defense. When the government was founded in 1789 it was the "war department." It did not become the Dept of Defense till after WWII when the military establishment had its beginnings as the bloated monster it has become.] has roughly 1,000 bases around the globe for our "defense." (This doesn't count the over 4,000 military sites we have here in the U.S.) Just roll that number around in your head for a bit. If you're not saying "what the hell!" and "how much is all of this costing?", then you're not paying attention.

The "What the Hell!" is a natural reaction. The answer to what it's costing us is quite another matter. But there's a guy who's done all that homework in this lengthy article.

The bottom line is approximately $170 billion. Can you imagine all the good we could do here at home with this money we're spending to cover the globe with our war-makers?

That tramp, tramp, tramp you hear is the sound of your money marching away to the great beyond.

What We Do Best

I ran across this piece from a few months back, and in this time of soul-searching about national expenditures--the "cliff" approaches, don't forget--it's good to spend a little time reminding ourselves of where this country's money really goes. It goes to the military machine, brothers and sisters. Have you heard the screeches from the Pentagon that if the country goes over the so-called "fiscal cliff," our national security will be endangered?

How is it that we have gotten to the point in this nation that anyone, anyone with half a brain, would actually believe that taking a few hundred billion away from the military would endanger the country? You have to wonder first of all, who in the world is endangering us? There is no nation state, no group of terrorists, or jihadists anywhere who endanger the security of this country. Really? People believe we're in danger.

Well, they should consider this article. It will take you about 5-6 minutes to read, but I can boil down the salient points for you:

• "On August 29th, the Associated Press reported that a “team of 200 U.S. Marines began patrolling Guatemala’s western coast this week in an unprecedented operation to beat drug traffickers in the Central America region, a U.S. military spokesman said . . . in the post-2001 era, along with two disastrous wars on the Eurasian mainland, we’ve been regularly sending in the Marines or special operations forces, as well as naval, air, and robotic power.  Such acts are, by now, so ordinary that they are seldom considered worthy of much discussion here, even though no other country acts (or even has the capacity to act) this way.  This is simply what Washington’s National Security Complex does for a living."
• Are you ready for this? I don't think so. I was floored, but here it is: "the U.S. actually tripled its arms sales last year, hitting a record high, and cornering almost 78% of the global arms trade.  This was reported in late August but, like those 200 Marines in Guatemala, never made onto front pages or into the top TV news stories.  And yet, if arms were drugs (and it’s possible that, in some sense, they are, and that we humans can indeed get addicted to them), then the U.S. has become something close enough to the world's sole dealer.  That should be front-page news, shouldn’t it?" 

Continuing from the piece:

Think of it this way: the United States is alone on the planet, not just in its ability, but in its willingness to use military force in drug wars, religious wars, political wars, conflicts of almost any sort, constantly and on a global scale.  No other group of powers collectively even comes close. It also stands alone as a purveyor of major weapons systems and so as a generator of war.  It is, in a sense, a massive machine for the promotion of war on a global scale.

We have, in other words, what increasingly looks like a monopoly on war.  There have, of course, been warrior societies in the past that committed themselves to a mobilized life of war-making above all else.  What’s unique about the United States is that it isn’t a warrior society.  Quite the opposite.

Washington may be mobilized for permanent war.  Special operations forces may be operating in up to 120 countries.  Drone bases may be proliferating across the planet.  We may be building up forces in the Persian Gulf and “pivoting” to Asia.  Warrior corporations and rent-a-gun mercenary outfits have mobilized on the country’s disparate battlefronts to profit from the increasingly privatized twenty-first-century American version of war.  The American people, however, are demobilized and detached from the wars, interventions, operations, and other military activities done in their name.  As a result, 200 Marines in Guatemala, almost 78% of global weapons sales, drones flying surveillance from Australia -- no one here notices; no one here cares. 

War: it’s what we do the most and attend to the least.  It’s a nasty combination.

Related articles

• Dear Barack: Stop terrorizing the planet (salon.com)
• A Failed Formula for Worldwide War (truthdig.com)
• How Washington's Political Culture Turned a Community Organizer Into a Deadly Drone Killer President (alternet.org)

Potentates

The Petraeus revelations have brought up a subject I've been griping about this for literally years: the lifestyles of the high-ranking military potentates who rule the world in their geographic fiefdoms. You did know that the Pentagon has divided the entire world into sections, each of which is commanded by a 4-star general or full admiral. So we have Pacific command, Africa command, Southern command, etc., etc. They are known as the "war lords" in military jargon. Indeed. These guys live like kings. There is no material want you can imagine they don't have satisfied: sumptuous housing, sumptuous eating, sumptuous transport. They have personal servants (called aides) who take care of everything from valet servive to calendar management. I'm not sure whether they also drive or whether that entails another functionary to the generals' royal personages.

Here's a pretty good idea of what we're talking about from the Washington Post:

The commanders who lead the nation’s military services and those who oversee troops around the world enjoy an array of perquisites befitting a billionaire, including executive jets, palatial homes, drivers, security guards and aides to carry their bags, press their uniforms and track their schedules in 10-minute increments. Their food is prepared by gourmet chefs. If they want music with their dinner parties, their staff can summon a string quartet or a choir.

The elite regional commanders who preside over large swaths of the planet don’t have to settle for Gulfstream V jets. They each have a C-40, the military equivalent of a Boeing 737, some of which are configured with beds.

Since Petraeus’s resignation, many have strained to understand how such a celebrated general could have behaved so badly. Some have speculated that an exhausting decade of war impaired his judgment. Others wondered if Petraeus was never the Boy Scout he appeared to be. But Gates, who still possesses a modest Kansan’s bemusement at Washington excess, has floated another theory.

“There is something about a sense of entitlement and of having great power that skews people’s judgment,” Gates said last week. (Source)

It's really an outrage that the taxpayers should be subsidizing this regal treatment for what is euphemistically called their "service." Hell, this ain't service, brothers and sisters, this is servitude for us poor slobs that put up with this, not to mention footing the bill for it.

And they tell me the Pentagon budget can't be cut. What a load of crap.

Related articles

• General demoted for lavish travel, spending (sacbee.com)
• Petraeus scandal puts four-star general lifestyle under scrutiny (stripes.com)
• Star Creeps: Petraeus & the Price of the Top-Heavy Pentagon (pogoblog.typepad.com)
• 5 US generals in trouble rock military culture (sacbee.com)