(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
What nation can intentionally target children for death and still expect the world to love us? Didn’t we used to denounce the Soviet Union for this stuff?
“In addition to looking for military-age males, it’s looking for children with potential hostile intent.”
– Lt Col Marion Carrington, Marine Corp Times
It sort of puts those school shooting deaths in perspective, doesn’t it? Our lack of respect for the lives of children overseas will eventually come home.
Lost in the debate about gun control in America is the fact that we are by far the largest gun trafficker in the world.
the US actually tripled its arms sales last year, hitting a record high, and cornering almost 78 per cent of the global arms trade.
We have a near monopoly in the world’s arms trade. By definition that makes us the greatest threat to world stability and peace.
It also exposes any effort at domestic gun control as total hypocrisy.
Back to the Global War
Pop-quiz time: In which nation did 200 Marines begin armed operations last September?
a) Afghanistan
b) Pakistan
c) Iran
d) Somalia
e) Yemen
f) Central Africa
g) The Philippines
h) Guatemala
If you guessed any of these, you were pretty close to being right.
After all, we have an ongoing war in Afghanistan that will not end after we’ve supposedly “withdrawn” in two years.
There’s been armed border crossing by U.S. Special Forces in Pakistan.
Special Forces operate on the Iran border.
We bomb Somalia on a regular basis, and the CIA operates there.
Special Forces operate on the ground in Yemen.
100 Green Berets were sent to Central Africa this past summer to work against a rebel army.
Special Forces have been operating in the Philippines against rebels for some time now.
The correct answer is “h”, where Marines will be working against drug traffickers.
Currently, U.S. Special Forces are operating in 120 nations.
Just a few decades ago the idea of American troops being deployed in almost every nation on Earth would have freaked a few people out. Now it is simply business as usual.
U.S. Army teams will be deploying to as many as 35 African countries early next year for training programs and other operations as part of an increased Pentagon role in Africa. The move would see small teams of U.S. troops dispatched to countries with groups allegedly linked to al-Qaeda, such as Libya, Sudan, Algeria and Niger. The teams are from a U.S. brigade that has the capability to use drones for military operations in Africa if granted permission. The deployment could also potentially lay the groundwork for future U.S. military intervention in Africa.
Most of these nations have no al-Qaida presence.
What happened to President George Washington’s warning about foreign entanglements?
Some say that our real reason for extending our military presence in Africa to combat China’s recent rising prominence in Africa.
I don’t know if that it true, but it certainly wouldn’t be the first time our military has been used for reasons other than national security.
after nearly nine years of war and occupation, US troops finally left Iraq. In their place, Big Oil is now present in force…
to protect the oil giants from dissent and protest, trade union offices have been raided, computers seized and equipment smashed, leaders arrested and prosecuted.
You missed the punchline
The War on (some) Terror has always been a bad joke.
Let’s start with some basic facts:
If we were serious about destroying al-Qaida, we would go after them where they are, right? Well, the largest known number of al-Qaida agents in the world are in Iraq. You know, the country we just pulled out of.
There are over 1,000 agents in Iraq presently. Recall that the number of al-Qaeda agents in Iraq could be counted on one hand before we invaded.
Our terrorism policy could be better summerized as “Good Terrrorists versus Bad Terrorists”. Good Terrorists are in conflict with common enemies.
Conservatives have long supported terrorist groups that operate against iran.
Plus, we tend to overlook terrorist connections against common enemies in Libya and Syria.
However, all that pales in comparison to the fact that the United States has allowed terrorists to operate from American soil for over 50 years (see Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch as prime examples).
American Imperialism and Backlash
By now many of you have probably heard of the Korean rapper, Psy. His song “Gangam Style” is the most watched video in YouTube history.
What many of you probably don’t know is that he performed a song in 2004 called “Hey American”. The lyrics go like this:
“Kill those f—ing Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives
Kill those f—ing Yankees who ordered them to torture
Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers
Kill them all slowly and painfully”
South Korea is not a place you normally think of for being anti-American, but it is hardly alone. America is currently more unpopular in the middle east than during the darkest days of the George W. Bush administration.
Why are we so hated? Is it because of our freedom?
Obviously not. Half of all the refugees in the world are fleeing Americas wars. And that doesn’t even count the policies of American clients, such as Israel’s Palestinian problem.
What this appears to represent is a type of brazen ignorance and egotism which has come to represent mainstream government policy; the type of myopia under which a country can launch a full-scale war, invasion and occupation of another sovereign nation under entirely false pretences, kill hundreds of thousands in the process and create millions of refugees and still at the end sincerely ask the question “Why they do hate us?”.
The Cost of Empire
It’s a statement to the power of the military-industrial complex that Social Security and Medicare are on the table for being cut, but cutting back on a worldwide military empire is spoken only in whispers.
We have over 1,000 overseas military bases, plus another 4,000 here at home. How much does all this “forward presence” cost us?
Forced by Congress to account for its spending overseas, the Pentagon has put that figure at $22.1bn a year. It turns out that even a conservative estimate of the true costs of garrisoning the globe comes to an annual total of about $170bn. In fact, it may be considerably higher. Since the onset of “the Global War on Terror” in 2001, the total cost for our garrisoning policies, for our presence abroad, has probably reached $1.8 trillion to $2.1 trillion.
Why the huge difference in numbers? Well, for starters Defense Department numbers simply can’t be trusted.
(The Department of Defence remains the only federal agency unable to pass a financial audit.)
Although the Overseas Cost Summary initially might seem quite thorough, you’ll soon notice that countries well known to host US bases have gone missing-in-action. In fact, at least 18 countries and foreign territories on the Pentagon’s own list of overseas bases go unnamed.
Nearly all this military spending overseas does nothing to help the domestic economy.
In fact, even if it wasn’t being spent overseas, military spending is probably the worst type of government spending when it comes to fiscal stimulus.
Military spending creates fewer jobs per million dollars expended than the same million invested in education, health care, 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.
So why do we keep mortgaging our future for a navy that hasn’t served a real military purpose since WWII? Why do we keep mortgaging our future on missle defense systems eventhough the Cold War is over? Why are we spending insane amounts of money on bombers designed to penetrate Soviet air space when the Soviet Union no longer exists? The answer is as obvious as the current owners of all those Iraqi oil wells.
We thus arrive at a universal, praxeological truth about war. War is the outcome of class conflict inherent in the political relationship – the relationship between ruler and ruled, parasite and producer, tax-consumer and taxpayer. The parasitic class makes war with purpose and deliberation in order to conceal and ratchet up their exploitation of the much larger productive class.
Thus, a permanent state of war or preparedness for war is optimal from the point of view of the ruling elite, especially one that controls a large and powerful state.
It seems rediculous to me the subjects of gun control, freedom and protecting our children are even being debated, while we stretch our military empire over the world, flood the world in guns, and intentionally target children for death.
We talk about security, while still supporting terrorists. We talk about fiscal responsibility, while mortgaging the future of our children to spend on useless wars that cause the rest of the world to hate us.
Our foreign policy is so far outside of sanity and morality one has to wonder what future generations will think about us? Will they be able to forgive us?
29 comments
Skip to comment form
The pentacon wants to expand operations into Africa under the excuse of Al-CIA-duh and the war of error but is really interested in China’s interest in Africa for it’s plentiful resources such are oil,metals, ag potential, uranium etc.
It struck me as kind of retarded in my book as we in the United States don’t make anything anymore so we need Africa’s natural resources why? No, really we make what. Bombs? Drones with bombs, crappy Satanically oriented financial instruments, airport scanners, secret space surveillance cameras.
A former Army guy, wounded in Iraq wonders about how government confiscated guns magically appeared in Iraq. He also wondered why he could not bring home a gun he liked but the guy from “intel” could. True story I should not have said.
Every time I think of this it makes me almost want to cry. These dollars spent on weapons here or elsewhere means suffering, fear and terror for millions. And this is who we are.
What you miss in your analysis is the fact that the American people have more confidence in the military than any other American institution–75% of Americans have either a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the military. The next highest is small business at 63%—of course Congress has the lowest rating of 13% despite the fact it is the only institution that actually most fully represents the American people at least theoretically.
This fascination with the military and with the use of violence is very useful to the global empire run for and by the global (not necessarily American) elite. This is something we will have to live with and, even if there are increasing numbers of people who don’t see violence as the optimal solution to all problems it will take a long time to get it out of our system.
Again, as I often say, our problems are cultural more than political.
this diary, which culminates so much of what has gone on, but the realities of it all . . . . a large undertaking, so kudos!
I agree with you on so many levels, I hardly know exactly where to begin.
So, I think commenting on the “endless wars” will be first. You know the old saying: If you tell a lie long enough, you and everyone will wound up believing it. There is no “war on terror” and there never was. Largely, all that has happened was calculated in a “blueprint” layed out in a document: “Rebuilding America’s Defenses:Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century — A Report of the Project for the New American Century — September 2000” PNAC. A cursory read of the document foretells all of what has happened. Wall Street, of course, was in accord!
Our tentacles constantly reach out: UNAC STATEMENT ON THE RAPIDLY INCREASING U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTION IN AFRICA By davidswanson – Posted on 13 January 2013
Yes, we’re in Africa, and have been for some time now, but as you will note, our largesse of efforts are concentrated now, in Mali. I commented on the article here!
We continue, by our actions, to represent a paradox in what we deem important in this world. Children learn, largely, from example. How can you explain to a child it’s O.K. to “drone” this child or that, but it’s not O.K. to kill a kid in school? Well, you get the idea! Children are impressionable …. very! How can you expect them to separate out “right” from “wrong” in our current “history?” But, it goes beyond that. We are an “uncaring” society (banger, this refers to the me, me, me, I, I, I, narcissist society, as we have so discussed). Largely, unless it’s catastrophe, people do not care to be involved [stemming from the I, I, I, mentality], as well as the paranoia that one might be sued by “one’s neighbor” sort of thing, such that there is much isolation between one human being and the next (so to speak). This “isolation” (garnered from the sense that no ones give a GD about “anyone” kind-of-frame of thinking) induced by “corporate type thinking and behavior,” etc. and other factors are what breeds the likes of these young people capable of such horrific crimes in our schools and elsewhere. Yes, guns are the weapon used, but it is the mind that pulls the trigger — a, perhaps, young mind that WE have betrayed in some way, giving way to his private thoughts of isolationism and knowledge he is uncared about! This is my hypothesis of what creates a “sick” society.
for the Pentagon to secure Africa (and it’s natural resources) against China when “American” corporations have already sold their very souls to China.
The global war of error is only the Russia replacement enemy of choice for “our” military-industrial complex.
In the Dmitry Orlovian scheme of thought “we” as the greatest consumers offering diminsishing returns simply have to go, globalistically orientationwise.